Christian Horner Sets 2018 F1 Title as Target

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner is confident that his team can take on Mercedes and Ferrari for the 2018 title. This stance is a far cry from his colleague Dr Helmut Marko’s opinion on Red Bull’s championship chances. On Monday, the temporary-liveried RB14 was revealed and allowed to stretch its legs.

Horner said: “If we’ve learned the lessons of last year, and if reliability improves, then I see no reason why we shouldn’t be on par. Sebastian Vettel won four titles for us before he was 30. Lewis did his four and is only 32. For me, Max is a champion. You can see which drivers are outstanding and Max is certainly one of them.”

Meanwhile, Marko said that Red Bull’s great strength is its drivers, Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo and how closely matched they are. Horner even admitted that it was only a matter of time until Verstappen became world championship winner. Red Bull will have another benchmark in 2018 after McLaren switched to use the same customer Renault engines.

Horner said: “McLaren is a great team and we look forward to racing against them. But we made great progress especially in the second half of last season and we hope to take that momentum into 2018. The rules are more or less the same, so there are many lessons we can draw from 2017 with the development of our new car.”

Red Bull finished third in the 2017 constructor championship and will be hoping to build up on that in the coming season. On Monday, the Austrian team not only launched their challenger for the 2018 F1 title, but also got a head-start on clocking some mileage. Unfortunately, there was a minor mishap as Daniel Ricciardo damaged the car on the damp Silverstone circuit. However the damage was minimal and only limited to the suspension, nose, front wing and floor