Red Bull boss, Christian Horner, believes that the recruitment of Adrian Newey will really begin to pay off in 2008, when the Austrian team should begin delivering race wins.

Talking to BBC Sport, the Englishman revealed that driver, David Coulthard, is looking forward to working with Newey, with whom he enjoyed success both at McLaren and WilliamsF1.

"His track record speaks for itself," said Horner. "He's won more than 100 Grands Prix with his cars and 12 world championships. And to further emphasise his importance, since he left Williams, the team have only won about 10 races.

"David's delighted by the appointment," he added, "and as a result of this, hopefully we'll be delivering race wins by 2008. Almost all of David's grand prix wins have come from Newey-made cars."

Newey's switch to Red Bull took almost everyone by surprise, not least Horner. "We'd spoken on and off socially during the season," he admitted, "and I detected he was looking further afield than just extending his McLaren agreement. Then talks and discussions developed very rapidly over the last month."

Newey doesn't join Red Bull until the end of February, far too late to have any input into the Red Bull cars that line up on the grid in Bahrain on March 12.

"The car will pretty much be on the way to Bahrain by the time he arrives," admitted Horner, "but he'll still have input into its development over the course of the season.

"His main focus will be the 2007 car. From there our aspirations are to compete at the front, win races and ultimately win world championships."