Red Bull Racing principal Christian Horner has said that improved reliability will be on of the key focuses for the team heading into the 2008 Formula 1 season.

The team finished fifth in the constructors' championship during 2007 but was made to pay for a series of reliability issues that lost valuable points and ultimately left the team just nine points shy of fourth placed Williams.

Heading into the new season however, the team will hope that the technical crew led by technical director Geoff Willis and designer Adrian Newey will be able to make strides forward with the RB4 – which will be an evolution of the RB3 that scored points in three of the last four races of the 2007 season.

"For the first time in our short history, there is continuity within the design group, with our engine partner and with the drivers," Horner told Formula1.com. "The RB4 will be an evolution of the RB3, which showed good pace during the season, especially in the final three races.

"The whole design group is now working together extremely well and Geoff was the final major piece within our line up. Adrian and Geoff already knew each other well from the times they had previously worked together at Williams and Leyton House, which enabled Geoff to hit the ground running when he joined us.

"We learnt many lessons during 2007 and obviously reliability is a key topic that the design and development groups are fully focused on. The Barcelona and Jerez tests were mainly focused on introducing the standard electronics system, which is new for 2008 and will eradicate traction control and engine braking."

Having confirmed that the new car will hit the track for the first time during the third week of January, Horner added that the aim for the season ahead was to try and get ahead of engine suppliers Renault in the constructors' championship.

"In 2007 we gave away approximately 24 points as a result of poor reliability, without which we would have been much closer to Renault and ahead of Williams," he said. "This is therefore one of our key focuses for 2008.

"With the same engine as the factory Renault team they, more than any other team, are our barometer. 2008 is certainly set to be another very close season."