“The grid is going to close up” - Horner downplays Red Bull’s early dominance
Red Bull have started F1 2023 with back-to-back 1-2 finishes in Bahrain and Jeddah.
It’s Red Bull’s best start to a season ever having not taken two consecutive 1-2s since 2009.
Remarkably, Red Bull’s advantage over the field is greater than it was at the end of 2022, when they won all but one of the races after the summer break.
However, Horner is remaining cautious despite an impressive start to the year.
“It's so early in the season," he said in an interview on Sky. “I mean, it's a 23-race calendar, we've done two races in Bahrain and Jeddah so far.
“And the venues vary a great deal, it's Australia in just over a week's time, so I'm sure it's going to ebb and flow. But we're hopeful that we can extract more performance from the car.
“The regulations are still relatively young. It's only the second year of these new regulations. So I'm expecting to see an awful lot of convergence during the course of the year, and the grid is going to tighten up.
“So we need to make hay while the sun shines at the moment while we've got a competitive car, and just keep pushing through the season.”
Horner explained that it was “critical” Red Bull started the year strongly given their limited wind tunnel time due to breaking the cost cap in 2021.
"It was so critical for us to come out of the blocks competitively," he added. "The wind tunnel reduction has applied since last October.
"So we couldn't afford to miss the target with that limited running, because you'd never be able to engineer your way out of that with that handicap. The team has done an amazing job and the RB19 has been the best start to a season we've ever had.
"We're only two races in, but to have had two 1-2 finishes, and be one point off the maximum score, I don't think we could have ever dreamed about that coming into the season."
