JUNE 11, 2010

Horner: Montreal Will Be An Interesting Test

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has said that this weekend's Canadian Grand Prix at Montreal will be a key test for his team, currently just a single point behind McLaren in the constructors' championship.

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has said that this weekend's Canadian Grand Prix at Montreal will be a key test for his team, currently just a single point behind McLaren in the constructors' championship.

"This circuit will be an interesting test," he conceded. "It's a different type of circuit and one that should play to the advantage of, certainly the Mercedes powered teams and the teams with the F-ducts, of which we have neither! So we're going to have to look to extract lap time from our car in a different way, as we have done at other circuits. If we can be quick here there is no circuit that we should be fearful of in the remainder of the championship."

Montreal, with its multiple high-speed sections, is one of the tracks most suited to the benefits of an F-duct wing-stalling device but Red Bull, having tried a system in Turkey in free practice only, has again put off using it.

"We want to make sure that when we introduce it, it provides a guaranteed lap time benefit. At Istanbul we had a look at it and the initial signs were encouraging but we didn't feel it was refined enough for race usage, so the guys back at Milton Keynes are focused on reintroducing it at one of the forthcoming races."

Despite McLaren being much closer to Red Bull's pace at Istanbul Park, Horner is confident for the remainder of the season.

"We managed to out-develop McLaren last year, bringing a lot of performance to the car in the last third of the year, and I've got every confidence we'll continue to take strides. Okay, we've been in a position to win six of seven races and have won three, but we were unlucky with a spark plug issue in Bahrain and a wheel nut in Australia, and then obviously the driver issue at Istanbul, but we are strong and we've got some good stuff in the pipeline.

"We're still relatively small and I think people forget how far we've come in a short time. But, with iconic teams like Ferrari and McLaren, the depth of resource and capacity they have is significant and we are going to have to work incredibly hard to maintain the development rate we've demonstrated so far."