Red Bull boss Christian Horner: Team can maintain its position in 2011 season – Formula 1 news
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has said that he believes his team will maintain its position in the 2011 Formula 1 season.
Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel made an excellent performance in the Australian Grand Prix for the team, Horner is looking forward to a successful season.
Vettel was the leader of Melbourne race and won his race ahead of McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton.
Horner said, “What we had here in Melbourne was put together pretty quickly and wasn't the best job we can do. Now we have to make it better for Malaysia. We leave Australia knowing we had a car capable of taking two places on the podium. It was genuine
pace.”
He added that the time gap of 22 seconds from MP4-26 car eased the pressure on Vettel but he believes in next races, Vettel will perform pressure free as he has better understood the car features.
In the winter testing, McLaren’s upgraded package used overcomplicated exhaust system while it received significant improvements in the last moments of the Australian GP and registered the second fastest time of the race on the time-sheets.
Horner told the media that the McLaren drivers’ performances in the event showed that they are still busy learning their upgraded chassis.
He admitted that they have seen a lot of exhaust blowing, during the races and it was quite difficult for the team to achieve their goals in presence of these regulations.
He went on to say, “We've stepped back a little bit, said let's find a simpler solution. Given the timeframe we gave ourselves it's unlikely that we've optimized the solution. I'd be disappointed if we can't really make some progress now on the diffuser,
floor and exhaust system.”
Other Red Bull driver Mark Webber failed to deliver a good performance of Vettel and came in sixth slot.
Webber said, “At the start I did a very good one today. I was side-by-side with Button, and Petrov risked in the first corner to push Button to the outside. Button pushed me to the outside to avoid Petrov, but it was not a problem.”
On the other hand, Horner highly appreciated McLaren’s unexpected performance and said that they can win 2011 year’s title as they were second fastest runners of the day.
He added that McLaren are a great and hard working team and they put their initial step towards its successful season. Moreover, they are the only team that always creates strong changes into their package and gives good results at the end of the season.
Regarding drivers’ performances, the Red Bull boss expected more improvements however the upcoming races will decide the significant upgrades of the team.
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