Red Bull Racing boss, Christian Horner believes that his team will not only have to contend with the challenge of Brawn GP in the remainder of the season, but also from the likes of Williams, Mclaren and Ferrari.
Lewis Hamilton became the first driver, outside the top-two teams, to win this season, with victory in Hungary, a feat that Horner believes could be repeated again and have a huge impact on the destination of both World Championships.
“It throws more cars into the mix,” Horner told Autosport. “It’s not going to be just a two-horse race on a weekend now because there are others in it.
“McLaren took a big step forward in Hungary and I think they’ll be a factor for the rest of the year. And Williams and Ferrari are looking strong.
“We just have to make sure that in the races we can’t win, we take as many points as we can as Mark Webber did [with third place] in Hungary.”
Despite this, Horner believes that upcoming car upgrades will allow his team to continue to close the gap to Brawn GP in the points table.
“We’ve still got a lot in the pipeline,” explained Horner. “The summer break is a bit inconvenient, but it’s a well deserved break and all the guys will come back fully recharged, pumped up and ready to go for Valencia.
“We’ve got plenty of development ideas coming through. We’ll keep trying to bring performance to the car at every race and take every race as it comes. Then the championship will take care of itself.”
Horner also revealed his surprise at the uncompetitiveness of Brawn GP in Hungary, a track where the Brackley team was expected to shine.
“Hungaroring was theoretically one of the Brawn’s stronger circuits – it’s like Monaco without the barriers so we expected a strong showing from them.
“We’re the closest we’ve been in the constructors’ championship since Melbourne, but it’s still a long way to go. We need to keep the momentum and close the gap more.”