In a race which threw some difficult challenges Red Bull's way, team boss Christian Horner says the only convincing way to assess the performance of its RB14 is to look at Daniel Ricciardo's fastest race lap.
The Milton Keynes-based outfit was forced to chase from behind yesterday in Melbourne, with Ricciardo starting his race from eighth on the grid while Max Verstappen lost a position to Kevin Magnussen's Haas at the start before a spin and a damaged floor compromised his car's performance.
However, Ricciardo's strong recovery, which led him back up to P4 and yielded the fastest race lap of the afternoon as he chased Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen, showcased the strong pace and potential of the team's RB14 chassis.
"What we could see in the closing stages of the race was that he was pushing Kimi very hard and he had very good pace," said Horner.
"We've got one lap in the Grand Prix to judge our pace, which he set the fastest lap on.
"Both of our cars sat looking at rear wings of different cars throughout the Grand Prix, and the only clear lap we had was when Daniel dropped back from Kimi and then went to push up to have a go in the last part of the race and set the fastest lap.
"We had a lot of pace in hand today, but we were never able to show it because they were constantly within a second of someone."
Horner has no doubts over the efficiency of the RB14's design, but insisted the overall package would require more improvement in order to boost its performance in qualifying.
"I think we've got some good information, we know we've got a good race car," he said.
"The negative for us is we've still got a deficit in qualifying."
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