If Red Bull Racing are to take the fight to Mercedes this season, they are going to have to start to show an upturn in performance soon.
The European season of Formula One is almost upon us, with eight of the next nine races coming across Europe, the teams will be working closer with their factories and bases, something which over the opening four rounds of the season in Australia, Malaysia, Bahrain and China has been somewhat of a logistical challenge.
With teams able to work closer with the factories, the development race will heat up significantly as the teams continue to learn about their new cars under the new Formula One regulations.
There has been a lot of talk in the media about just how much more development there can be for Mercedes, with many suggesting that whilst the Mercedes can still improve to reach their optimum performance, other teams will have more scope for improvement.
‘We’ve got to take the fight to them [Mercedes], We’re going to give it everything. I believe we can take the fight to them, we just can’t concede too much more ground. Horner told Sky Sports.
Four-time Formula One World Champion Sebastian Vettel is currently fifth in the drivers standings, 46 points behind championship leader Nico Rosberg.
In the constructors championship Red Bull are second behind Mercedes, but already 97 points adrift, with Mercedes taking all four race victories this season.
So Red Bull are already playing catch-up.
Whilst an Adrian Newey designed Red Bull is always going to be aerodynamically sound and enjoy excellent downforce the one area that they and Renault have struggled with is straight-line speed, something that team principal Christian Horner wasn’t shy in revealing.
‘We were 22kph slower on that kilometre straight [in China], that represented almost 100 metres that we were giving away on the straight.
‘That’s where we’ve got to improve – it’s quite simple. We know where we’ve got to fix our issues and hopefully there are some steps towards that in Barcelona.’
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