10/03/2014
NEWS STORY
Days before the 2014 season opener, at which his team is not widely expected to even finish, Red Bull team boss Christian Horner has defended his design guru Adrian Newey.
With only Marussia and Lotus having completed less pre-season mileage - the Enstone outfit having skipped the opening (Jerez) test altogether, Red Bull is clearly on the back foot. Having failed to complete a single race distance run the Austrian outfit is widely being written off not only in terms of Melbourne but the opening fly-away races.
While some of the blame is being put down to the team's decision to concentrate on its 2013 programme - even at a time when both titles were already clearly won - others are pointing the finger at Newey, suggesting that the man who has won titles with Red Bull, McLaren and Williams, has lost his touch.
Though, as can be seen with the others teams running the Renault power units, there are problems with the French manufacturer's response to the 2014 regulation changes, Red Bull's issues appear to centre on how Newey has packaged the unit with his 2014 creation the RB10.
Despite fears that his team could get slaughtered in the opening races, Horner has leapt to the defence of the British designer.
"We aggressively pushed the boundaries on the packaging of the car, as Adrian always does, to try and get every bit of aerodynamic advantage," he is quoted as saying by the Guardian. "Pushing the boundaries in all areas is what Formula One is all about. It's about getting the most out of every single element.
"We took a step over the line at the first test," he continued. "We then engineered our way out of that for Bahrain, and cooling now isn't an issue with the car at all.
"Adrian's probably the most competitive person I've ever met," he insisted. "For sure, he's working tremendously hard at the moment. But we can't control all aspects of the vehicle. Collectively with Renault, I'm confident we'll get on top of it. Sometimes to find the limit you've got to go over where the limit is, otherwise you don't know where it is. We'd rather make a quick car reliable than a reliable car quick. It's far harder that way round, and I think fundamentally the car we've got is good.
"The split between chassis and engine is obviously different in our team than it is at Mercedes and Ferrari," he admitted. "We're not totally integrated. We have an extremely close working relationship, and there's an awful lot of exchange of information and ideas.
"The bottom line is Mercedes have got a bit of a march on people," he admitted. "They invested more, they invested earlier. They've got themselves into a good position. If Mercedes were to finish two laps ahead of the opposition in Melbourne, that wouldn't be a surprise, based on what we've seen in preseason testing. It's massive.
"Reliability is going to be a key element. The other element is the restriction in the amount of fuel, and how you run your race, and Melbourne is one of the highest-demanding circuits. A dry race with no safety cars is going to put a few teams under pressure with regard to fuel economy."
Ironically, the Milton Keynes outfit looks as though it may well have to rely on the (absurd) double points rule introduced this year in the wake of its dominance in 2013.
"I was voting for double points from Silverstone onwards," admitted Horner.
Chris Balfe