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Horner: Engine reliability key for Red Bull in 2018

Red Bull principal Christian Horner says improved engine performance and reliability will be crucial to the team's fortunes in 2018.

Red Bull won three races this season in Azerbaijan, Malaysia and Mexico. However it was also plagued with breakdowns and a power deficit, meaning that a title challenge was out of the question.

"Reliability wise we have [failed to finish] in far too many races," Horner said.

Daniel Ricciardo retired from the final race of the season with a hydraulic failure. It cost him fourth place in the drivers championship, which went instead to Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen.

As a whole, the team took 13 podiums in 2017 - but recorded just as many DNFs. They finished the season in third place in the constructors standings, 300 points behind Mercedes and 154 in arrears from Ferrari.

"Reliability has cost us dear this year," Horner admitted. "If you assume that each of those DNFs averages between 10 and 12 points, you don't have to be a mathematics professor to work out how costly that has been for us."

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But while Horner identified reliability as a key issue next year, he also needs more power and performance overall.

"We need desperately the engine to concertina in performance," he said. "It is also about maintaining the chassis development that we have had during the second half of the year."

However, Horner was determined not be be too downcast by the team's performance in the final two races of 2017. He explained that these were difficult tracks for Red Bull and not representative of their true pace.

"Brazil is power sensitive," he explained. "And in Abu Dhabi you could see Mercedes were in a class of their own.

"They would go half a second quicker or slower depending on what engine mode they choose. Hats off to them. They are doing a great job.

"But engine performance is a key differentiator," he added.

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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.