Red Bull’s ‘unimaginable’ challenge gives hope to rival teams
Christian Horner is adamant Red Bull winning all 22 of this year’s races would be “unimaginable”, the team boss saying they’re just taking it one race at a time.
Red Bull have dominated the early part of this season’s championship with the Milton Keynes squad kick-starting their title defence with five wins in five races.
With four of those coming in 1-2 results, George Russell has declared they could win every one of this year’s grands prix, a sentiment echoed by his team boss Toto Wolff.
With their Adrian Newey-designed RB19 showing better straight-line speed as well as cornering than any other car on the grid, Red Bull are seemingly unstoppable.
Horner, though, doesn’t agree with the Briton convinced there will come a race where Red Bull are beaten.
“I think that’s a massively tall order,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times conducted before Imola was cancelled.
“I mean, you’ve got 23 events, street circuits, there’s going to be weather that turns up, there’s going to be reliability, strategy, an element of luck.
“So I think to win 23 races is unimaginable.
“I’m sitting here after five races and we’ve won the first five and that is by far the best start we’ve ever had to a grand pix season. We just want to keep that rolling as long as we can, take one race of time and not think about trying to win 23 races.”
PlanetF1.com recommends
‘Max Verstappen v Sergio Perez new edition of Ayrton Senna v Alain Prost’
Ralf Schumacher accuses Helmut Marko of blocking Mick for ‘personal reasons’
But while two of Red Bull’s biggest rivals are set to introduce major upgrades in the coming races in the hope of narrowing the deficit, Horner concedes Red Bull could yet trip themselves up with reliability issues.
Max Verstappen, leading the championship by 14 points ahead of his team-mate Sergio Perez, is already onto his third of four penalty-free gearboxes for the season with the driver having taken a new one ahead of qualifying in Miami.
Perez has also taken new gearbox and engine components, moving onto his third Energy Store and Control Electronics with both team-mates using two exhaust systems.
“Reliability is a key thing,” Horner admitted. “The approach we take is you’re always learning and whether you’re winning or you’re losing you’re always learning and you can leave no stone unturned.
“So it’s all about the marginal gains. So even from the race we finished first and second of the weekend it’s like, ‘Okay, where can we be better? What could we have done better? Where were the risks reliability wise on the car?’. So it’s never being enough.”
Red Bull lead the Constructors’ Championship with 224 points, 122 ahead of Aston Martin.
The article Red Bull’s ‘unimaginable’ challenge gives hope to rival teams appeared first on Planetf1.com.