Much was made of this year’s Red Bull Racing RB13 and that Adrian Newey would at last be able to give Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen the tools they needed to challenge both Mercedes and Ferrari for the wins that the team believed they deserved.
Although Verstappen did stand on the podium in China with team-mate Ricciardo in close formation taking fourth, they were still 45 seconds adrift of race winner Lewis Hamilton and second placed Sebastian Vettel. Clearly the RB13 is not currently in the same race as the Mercedes and Ferraris.
Now with the Spanish Grand Prix just two weeks away, the team is relying on their design mastermind Newey to bring them into the race for the championship with his expected radically updated design package.
"The whole factory is focused on that Barcelona upgrade," team boss Christian Horner told Sky Sports F1. "That hopefully is the catalyst to get our season started and it's a lot of components and we'll be hoping it's going to deliver.
"Adrian has been working night and day on it. He's put a huge amount of effort into this upgrade. Hopefully it'll deliver for us. Obviously the regulations are still quite immature, there's still quite sizable gains to be had."
With qualifying for the Russian Grand Prix set as the pre-Barcelona benchmark, Horner is hoping that Red Bull comes away from Sochi as the 'best of the rest' and that the forthcoming update will accelerate its progress.
"The reality is if we line up in order we'll be fifth and sixth. The gap I think in qualifying is going to be bigger than it will be in the race, so I would say 0.7 or 0.8s in qualifying and hopefully we can get within 0.3s [per lap] in the race. So for us this race is about damage limitation. The priority is to get both cars to the finish and then get that upgrade."
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