Christian Horner insists that hard work was the key factor in
Red Bull evolving from a 'party team' into one that will hope to wrap up another championship title this weekend in Brazil.
Red Bull entered F1 back in 2005 having purchased the Jaguar team when Ford elected to leave the sport, although the early years would be somewhat lacking in results – with only three podium finishes in the first four years on the grid.
From 2009 onwards however, the team has become an established force on the grid with no fewer than 34 victories, including an astonishing twelve in 19 races last year.
Already,
Red Bull has wrapped up the constructors' championship for a third successive campaign ahead of Interlagos – where
Sebastian Vettel will hope to take another drivers' crown – and Horner said hard work and putting the right team together was the key in the Milton Keynes-based outfit becoming a title-winning team.
“Red Bull came into
Formula One at the beginning of 2005,” he said. “Dietrich Mateschitz had a vision. He'd been a sponsor, he'd been a shareholder and for the first time, after acquiring the Jaguar team became a team owner and his vision was very much to compete at the front in Formula One.
“Certainly the perception, perhaps, in the early days was that
Red Bull turned up, played their music loud and were perceived as a party team, perhaps just happy to be in
Formula One but underlying that was a determination to work our way to the front and slowly and steadily we gathered the right people into the team during the course of 2006 and at the beginning of 2007.
“We started to build, we started to work as a unit, to work as a team and then by the time the new regulations came along, a clean sheet of paper in 2009, it allowed all of the departments to demonstrate their abilities to work together as one group. In 2009, we started winning.
“We challenged for the championship; we fell short that year, but then we have kept that momentum. We went on to win both titles in 2010, both titles again 2011 and again a third Constructors' championship this year. And that is purely down to the hard work, the dedication, the application of every single member of the team.
“We've got some great leadership in the team: Adrian Newey does a stunning job of leading the technical team but it requires all of the departments to do their bit. I'm extremely proud to say that they've absolutely done that and the testimony to that is the 34 races that we've won, the 80 podiums that we've had in only eight seasons. It's all down to the people and of course to talented drivers: Sebastian and
Mark Webber have been a very successful pairing and what Sebastian has achieved in only 100 races again is quite remarkable.”