Christian Horner says Red Bull has to have both cars scoring strong points regularly if it wants to challenge Ferrari for second position in the Constructors’ Championship.
Red Bull has taken two wins while Ferrari is yet to triumph in 2019, while Max Verstappen heads both Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc in the Drivers’ standings.
But Pierre Gasly has endured a fraught first half of 2019 in Red Bull colours and, after a promising display at Silverstone, ended without points at Hockenheim after colliding with Alexander Albon.
Red Bull trails Ferrari by 44 points and reckons the runner-up position is within reach if Gasly can step up on a regular basis.
“It’s been up and down,” said Horner on Gasly’s display at Hockenheim.
“He had a strong qualifying. He had a difficult first pit stop, there was a problem with the right-rear wheel nut and then they had to hold him because the whole queue of cars came in.
“He was recovering well, recovering, recovering, recovering, then on the last restart he passed [Sebastian] Vettel but went wide on three consecutive laps at Turn 1 and that’s where the other cars got past him.
“And then obviously racing with Albon they tripped over each other, which was frustrating because it was a good opportunity to take a lot of points out of Ferrari.
“So instead of taking 20 odds points out of them, we’ve only taken seven or eight.
“I think if we can start double scoring that’s [second] our target in the second half of the year to close that gap down.”
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