Christian Horner says Red Bull hopes to put pressure on Williams and Ferrari in the upcoming races.

Red Bull has been hampered by a number of reliability issues during the early part of the season and has been unable to match the pace of the leading three teams, with Daniel Ricciardo recording a best result of sixth place. However, Horner says the start of the European season has seen the team regroup and it has set itself the target of overhauling Williams and closing the gap to Ferrari.

"Our target is to keep improving the car," Horner said. "After a difficult start last year we bounced back from pre-season testing to the first race and we want to try and make a big step forward in the next few races to put Williams and maybe even Ferrari under a bit of pressure.

"The team has been used to winning over the last few years and it's tough when you're not running at the front where that's where you're used to being. But the great thing here is that everyone is using it as a motivation to get back there. Everyone has got their head down, everybody's working incredibly hard and we can see progress in many areas."

And Horner says he has faith in Renault having seen a positive reaction to the disappointing start to the season.

"I think in this two week period to re-group and Renault to have done plenty of running on their dynos and iron out some of the issues they've had, has been very timely and hopefully we can use that to great effect in Barcelona next week."

Click here for a look at the radical Honda power unit design

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.

Recent Posts

Ricciardo ‘grateful’ to Red Bull for calling the end to his F1 career

There was a time when former F1 driver Daniel Ricciardo thrived on instinct, late braking,…

4 hours ago

Audi’s first reality check: No short-term fix for one costly weakness

A sense of unease is beginning to settle over Audi’s fledgling Formula 1 campaign, as…

5 hours ago

Alpine issues fiery open letter on Colapinto and social media hate

Alpine has turned to social media to address the storm of backlash following last weekend’s…

7 hours ago

A salute to Sir Jack - trail blazer extraordinaire

F1 legend Sir Jack Brabham, one of Australia's greatest sportsmen, was born on this day…

8 hours ago

The dawn of the GMR-001: Genesis ignites its WEC ambitions!

Feast your eyes on the Genesis GMR-001, the sleek new titan ready to shake up…

9 hours ago

Stroll set for GT World Challenge debut at Paul Ricard

As a sudden forced hiatus puts a halt on Formula 1 this month due to…

11 hours ago