12/11/2023
NEWS STORY
Red Bull boss, Christian Horner has dismissed Lewis Hamilton's claim that the Austrian outfit is set to dominate F1 for the next "couple of years".
"The Red Bull is so far away, I think they're probably going to be very clear for the next couple of years," said Hamilton recently.
His claim comes weeks after Max Verstappen secured his third successive title and at a time Red Bull has won all but one race this season and Mercedes looks set to go 'win-less' for the first time since 2012.
While many point to the ever improving form of McLaren, and others to the belief that Mercedes and Ferrari will learn from this year's mistakes, the fact that there are no significant rule changes does point to Red Bull continuing its winning ways.
Not so, argues Horner, who was keen to play down suggestions that windtunnel data is already favouring his team.
"It's always difficult to read too much into those things," he told Autosport. "I think that a lot of world championships are won in the wind tunnel numbers at this time of year.
"I think that we've got a great car, we've got a great basis," continued the Briton, who has consistently claimed that over time team performance will converge. "We need to keep evolving it, but of course, the returns are going to diminish because you're hitting the top of the curve. And you can see it will concertina. It will become closer and that will stretch us more.
"The team are very, very motivated," he warned however. You can see nobody's let off since we won the championship. Everybody's still fully on it."
In much the same way that Singapore was a shock to the team, Horner admits to still hurting from last year's performance in Brazil, where George Russell scored Mercedes only win of the season.
"You have got to keep improving in all areas," he said. "I think leaving this race last year hurt, in that our performance wasn't as strong as we would have liked.
"We felt we didn't get the set-up right. So we learned the lessons from last year and we applied them well and focused a car on the race.
"In the end, we came away with a pole, the Sprint win and the Grand Prix, with a third and the fourth for Checo."