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Horner believes in narrowing gap with McLaren: 'Then the world looks different'
The Australian Grand Prix's end result was a reason for hope for Red Bull Racing and with Max Verstappen's second place finish the Austrian team and the reigning champion scored big points. Although the gap to McLaren was significant during large parts of the race, Christian Horner thinks that the RB21's basis is such that it can be developed well enought to take the fight to McLaren.
After the wet race in Melbourne Horner shed light on Red Bull's approach to winter testing. "We did some big set-up changes in Bahrain. So we purposely wanted to go to extremes to understand the setup parameters so that you've got your toolbox of knowledge when you go racing," the Briton told GPblog and others.
When comparing the RB1 to its predecesor, RB20, Horner sees many improments. "I think the characteristics that this car has is much calmer than RB20. There’s not the nasty snaps that there was on RB20, so that gives us a good dynamic platform for us to develop the car through the season, through all the different races that we're going to head to."
Tyre management to improve, according to Horner
In Melbourne, the McLaren managed to keep the tyres alive much longer than the Red Bull, however, the Austrian team's principal believes his outfit will make strides in this aspect as well. "Yes, when you've got a car that's very well balanced, the whole world looks different," he said.
In short, Horner concluded, he looked back on the opener of the year with some satisfaction. "So for us, I think it's a very solid start to what's going to be a marathon of a year."
This article was written in collaboration with Ludo van Denderen.
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