“Last year our reliability cost us a huge amount of points finishes,” he reflected. “The car showed potential in places, but we didn't manage to capitalise on that because of the Achilles' heel which was the transmission. This year we've enjoyed to-date 100 per cent reliability in races with the car; the only DNFs we've had have been through accidents.
“That's not by luck; it's through engineering solutions, dealing with problems and good design at the end of the day. The target is obviously to retain that reliability record, which is imperative if we're going to achieve our target of fourth in the championship.”
Describing newly re-signed Webber [see separate story –
click here] as being ‘in the form of his life at the moment and doing a great job for us', Horner is also quick to praise Coulthard's contribution, the highlight of which has undoubtedly been the Scot's rostrum finish in Canada – only
Red Bull's third in 61 races in the uppermost echelon.
Whilst confessing that repeating such a feat between now and the end of the campaign will be ‘extremely tough', Horner refuses to rule such an achievement out, and suggests that
BMW would do well to begin looking over their shoulders as the season progresses – beginning with
Silverstone this weekend.
“I think at Magny-Cours we could have fought for the podium,” he reasoned, “had it not been for the poor starts that both Mark and David had. That compromised their first stints quite badly – otherwise Mark would have been right up there with [Jarno] Trulli, whose pace we were equal to in every way in the race.
“At a circuit that traditionally hasn't been strong for us, we scored our first-ever points, and we were ultimately disappointed with sixth place, because there's the potential there to do better than that.
