Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has acknowledged that they cannot expect to challenge the Mercedes-powered cars at the season opener in Melbourne.
The Briton denied that the team had suddenly forgotten how to build a competitive car after a troublesome pre-season on the back of four straight championship wins.
“You don’t become idiots overnight,” Horner told the Telegraph. “We’ve got a very strong group of people here. There’s a real determination. You only have to look at the amount of hours going in. It’s massive.”
Speaking about where he expects them to be, with the suggestion they might stuggle to escape even Q1, Horner said they simply “have no real idea” where they are in the pecking order.
“After testing we quite clearly have a car which doesn’t have the ultimate pace, and doesn’t have the reliability. So they are fairly two fundamental factors that we need to get on top of,” he added.
“To be honest with you, we have no real idea. We know we don’t have the pace to challenge the Mercedes teams at the moment, but it’s very much a case of see where we are in Melbourne. Then we know the scale and magnitude of what we have to climb.
“We don’t even know our starting point at the moment, so it’s impossible to make predictions sitting here in Milton Keynes a week prior to the first race. But I have every confidence in the team, and in Renault, that we can make it. Our target is [to catch up] as soon as possible.”
