Red Bull Racing will be challenging BMW-Sauber for the honour of being recognised as
Formula 1's third team' by the end of the 2008 season that is the conviction of the Milton Keynes-based outfit's team principal, Christian Horner.
RBR has registered 24 points over the opening eight grands prix of the current campaign an impressive return, and one that has already matched the team's overall total from last year. Such form is the product of consistently strong pace and vastly improved reliability, and sees the energy drinks-backed squad sitting fourth in the constructors' world championship heading into this weekend's British Grand Prix one of only two races on the calendar in which Red Bull has yet to trouble the scorers in its four-year history in the top flight.
Though the fact that the customer Renault-powered concern is placed ahead of such luminaries as
Toyota,
Williams,
Honda and most pertinently of all the works
Renault entry may surprise some, it has seemingly come as no surprise to Horner.
I think we've made a quantum leap from last year,
F1's youngest team principal told
Crash.net. The car is showing good pace, and touchwood we've had good reliability so far too. In eight races we've scored points in seven of them, we achieved the first podium of the year in Montreal with David [Coulthard], and Mark has been regularly in the points, with six points' finishes so far. We're ahead of some high-status rivals, and we're definitely moving in the right direction.
RBR's chronic unreliability cost the squad, Horner reckons, as many as 24 points in 2007 and with it fourth position in the final constructors' title chase. That has made, the 34-year-old acknowledges, the current bullet-proof form on that front all-the-more encouraging.
