Indeed, following a low-key birth and mixed early indications, the RB4 seems to be developing into a car capable of rivalling such as
Williams,
Renault and even last year's runners-up
BMW out on the track, with
David Coulthard and
Mark Webber winding up respectively second and fifth-quickest out of some 19 drivers on the final day of pre-season group testing in Barcelona earlier this week.
Though Horner is refusing to make any concrete predictions – with the battle for podium places and points finishes likely to be finely-poised between a number of teams – he does not hide his optimism ahead of the opening race Down Under, now little over a fortnight away.
“It's always very difficult to gauge where you are,” the 34-year-old underlined, “even if we do tend to do all the testing with other teams in public now. We've been working through our own programme, we're confident we've made a good step from where RB3 was and we'll see in Melbourne where we're at.
“It's inevitably – from what we've seen so far – going to be very close between
Ferrari and
McLaren, and then the chasing pack consists of three or four teams at the moment which includes ourselves. It's going to be a very, very tight season by the looks of things.
“I think – if you look at it – the front four positions are pretty locked-out between Ferrari and McLaren at the moment, but we came very, very close in extraordinary circumstances like in Fuji last year to Mark winning his first race.
“You can never say never, and certainly we turn up at every grand prix with the intention of competing to win, but one has to be realistic. We're in part of a development phase, and the plan is obviously to close the gap to the leading teams.
“It's always dangerous setting too many targets, but we're going to Melbourne with the target of qualifying both cars in the top ten and ideally bringing both cars home in the points. That would offer us a solid platform from which to build thereafter, but there are ten other teams going there with the same objective.
