Red Bull’s 2021 season win with Max Verstappen could be viewed as the team’s return to glory, which had been missing since Sebastian Vettel‘s final season with them. The resurgence was remarkable, as the team ran away with both titles in 2022, this time probably without breaching the cost cap.

And though the team had the best performance on the grid in the entire season, Christian Horner and his squad don’t want to fly too high, as they stay wary of their competition. Not only are they keeping an eye out for last year’s and the usual challengers, Ferrari and Mercedes, but they have also kept their ears open for the middle of the grid.

Christian Horner, in a conversation with Auto Motor und Sport, said, “You never know, I mean Alpine made progress in the second half of the year. Aston Martin, we keep hearing big numbers coming out of there in their expectations, so you just don’t know in terms of what the running order will be. But McLaren maybe even will get it together this year. So inevitably, the grid should, with stable regulations, start to close up.”

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They brought in the regulations to increase wheel-to-wheel racing and enable more overtakes, which, according to many numbers as well as opinions, worked. But will they be enough for Red Bull’s crown to be threatened? Can the teams cut down the huge deficit to the leaders? We can’t wait to find out.

Christian Horner speculates on Ferrari and Mercedes’s development

And while Ferrari’s performance depleted towards the end of the last season, Mercedes started to catch up with the front of the grid, especially the prancing horse, which causes concern and alarm for Red Bull.

Horner added, “But of course, Ferrari had a very good car last year, they’re going to come out fighting hard this year. Mercedes, I’m sure, will recover from their annus horribilis last year. So let’s see, the competitors are going to be very, very strong.”

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Red Bull sounds confident in its ways. Last year, it bagged 17 wins out of 22 rounds, so for this season, its calculations seem to be on the safe side as Horner targets at least nine wins to secure the championship. But Formula One teams never have it easy, and the Milton Keynes team certainly enjoys pushing the envelope to the point of overkill.