RED BULL RACING boss Christian Horner has warned championship leader Jenson Button the title race is far from over, and his drivers can still challenge for ultimate honours this season.
Button boasts a comfortable 16-point lead over team mate Rubens Barrichello, with Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber a further 12 and 15.5 points behind respectively.
Horner though refused to concede the battle for both the driver’s and constructor’s championships, stating a mid-season form slump from Brawn GP would reignite Red Bull’s fast evaporating title chances.
“We’re still reasonably early in the season. They’ve got a very good lead in the constructors’, the drivers’ … but a couple of bad races for Jenson, a couple of wins for Sebastian or Mark, can bring them right back into contention,” he said.
Despite the long-awaited arrival of the double diffuser, the chasm in performance between Red Bull and Brawn GP appeared to grow significantly at Monaco, with Vettel struggling in the race and qualifying while Webber finished fifth, albeit mere seconds away from a podium position.
However, Horner believes the team will witness the full effects of the new diffuser during the coming rounds in Turkey and Britain, with their high-speed corners likely to favour his team.
“I think that we always expected that (Monaco) was not going to feature as our strongest circuit. The Brawn has always been good at this type of track, and Ferrari has definitely made progress over the last couple of races,” he said.
“So it will be interesting when we go to Istanbul and Silverstone. Theoretically they are tracks that should come to the characteristics of our car.
“Well, it was a lot of hard work, and a big effort from all the boys in the garage - they’ve not seen their beds for too many hours this weekend. And also back at Milton Keynes. But we can see that it has put aero performance on the car.”
