Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has denied reports that the outfit will drop the heavily revised RB8 for the season opening race, after it ran into problems during testing.
The Milton Keynes based outfit introduced several major upgrades for the third and fourth day of testing, but could only complete a handful of laps after reliability issues hit the car.
This prompted speculation that Red Bull would revert to the chassis used on days one and two, which showed consistent speed and strong reliability.
Horner however says that won’t be the case, and the car seen at the opening race, will be the revised chassis featuring their new exhaust layout.
“Those upgrades seem to be working OK and will certainly be on the car in Australia in 10 days’ time,” he told the BBC.
Meanwhile, Horner believes Jenson Button imposes the greatest threat to the teams third consecutive Drivers’ title.
“Lewis is going to be pushing hard this year, Jenson had a great year last year, you can’t rule out Fernando because he is a world-class driver and it will be interesting to see how Kimi fares on his return.”
Asked to pick out the strongest rival, minus Mark Webber, he replied: “Probably Jenson.”
