Red Bull keen to capitalise as Rosberg/Hamilton fight intensifies

40

Christian Horner is hoping the championship battle between Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton will lead to opportunities for Red Bull as it intensifies.

Rosberg can theoretically win the title in Mexico this weekend, with the German able to secure his first championship if he wins the race and Hamilton fails to score. However, Horner expects the battle to continue and says Red Bull will look to take advantage of any incidents the two have.

"Now that we are at the business end of the championship, you can only imagine that it is going to intensify between the two of those guys, so we just want to be in a position to be able to capitalise on any moments they might have," Horner said.

"Hopefully [Mexico will be] similar to [Austin]. Mercedes, having won all the races they have this year, why wouldn’t they have that pace at the final three? So we just need to make sure that we are the team in the position to be able to capitalise in the event that they trip up."

And Horner says Red Bull is able to see how it has closed the gap to Mercedes because Rosberg and Hamilton will be pushing each other so hard in races.

"We have definitely closed the gap, if you look at the race [in Austin]; there is not a huge divergence. One has to assume that they are not cruising after that last pit stop because they are racing for the world championship. So it is encouraging that we are able to be running around then instead of just watching them go into the distance, it has been a massive step forwards for us this year.

"We know that the two or three tenths they have in their pocket for qualifying is quite painful for us, but on race day we are getting closer and closer."

TECHNICAL SNAPSHOT: Austin

Scene at the United States Grand Prix

2016 USGP - Quotes of the week

2017 driver line-ups so far

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.