Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRed Bull Racing

Horner hopes Mercedes struggles to improve

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Red Bull team principal Christian Horner admits he is hoping Mercedes is “in to diminishing returns” with its power unit.

Mercedes dominated the 2014 season and didn’t show its hand in terms of pace during the first test at Jerez, completing the most laps of any team but never finishing higher than third in the standings. With Renault looking to reduce the deficit to Mercedes by 50% this season, the first test saw teething problems for the new power unit in the RB11 and Horner is aware how much progress Red Bull makes is dependent on the level of Mercedes’ improvement.

“I think it all depends on what the opposition have done during the winter as well,” Horner said. “Nobody is obviously standing still but hopefully they did such a good job last year they’re in to diminishing returns.

“I think we can only focus on ourselves with Renault and all I can tell you is collectively we’re working well together, we’re making good progress. We’re understanding where performance is to come and everybody’s very focused on those areas and on extracting that performance.

“I feel were moving in the right direction, it’s not an insignificant amount of deficit we’ve got to claw back but certainly if you look at the detail on the car it’s a fantastic achievement by the team. It’s an evolution of last year’s car which addresses some of last year’s weaknesses and it’s a very detailed, very impressive car which we've turned up with as a starting point for the campaign this year.”

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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.