Red Bull's Christian Horner believes his team has been building its momentum in the latter part of the season despite an "oddball" performance last month in Singapore.
Red Bull was the first team to defeat Mercedes this year, thanks to Max Verstappen's win in Austria.
The Milton Keynes-based outfit repeated the feat in Germany, but its strength relative to its front-running rivals has subsided since the end of F1's summer break.
While Red Bull never anticipated winning on power circuits Spa and Monza, it was singled out as a clear favourite to take top spoils at Singapore. But set-up issues completely quashed its prospects at Marina Bay.
"For me the oddball event was Singapore. We undershot there," Horner told Motorsport.com.
"We didn't extract as much out of the car as the potential of the car had. I think it was predominantly a setup issue. And I think we have understood it subsequent to the event.
"It was a shame because Singapore is a circuit – we still managed to get a podium out of it and beat both Mercedes – but you could not help but feel that we had not maximised our potential."
Since Singapore, Horner considers Red Bull's results as having been "on par" with expectations, taking into account Ferrari's significant step forward since Spa. He insists his team and Honda are nicely building their momentum in anticipation of 2020
"The momentum that we have built this year, it was always going to be a transitionary year," explained the Briton.
"I think what Honda have done in improving each of the engines that have been introduced [is positive], and I think chassis wise for sure we took a bigger hit on the front wing regs than perhaps some of our competitor
"But having understood that and worked our way through that, it very much feels like we are building good momentum in the latter stage of development of this car into 2020."
As far as Horner is concerned, the concerted effort by Red Bull and Honda and the subsequent results achieved this year all bode well for a competitive campaign next season.
"I think collectively there are a lot of good things going on and this year has been very much a transitionary year," he added.
"I think working with the engineers at Sakura and Milton Keynes, they have really gelled extremely well, and I think we will start to see the benefits of that hopefully during the course of next year."
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