Red Bull Racing boss man Christian Horner has said that he sees the return to form of McLaren and Ferrari as being a help to his team's title ambitions, rather than a hindrance to their hopes of reeling in Brawn GP.
Neither title contender had a car in real contention for the victory at last weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix, with Lewis Hamilton taking his first win of the year for McLaren, and Kimi Raikkonen finishing second for Ferrari. In contrast, Red Bull's Mark Webber came home third, with his team mate Sebastian Vettel failing to finish. The Brawn GP cars of Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello finished back in 7th and 10th place respectively.
But Horner believes that the probability of the two teams taking points off Brawn meant that it was a benefit to his squad, despite the obvious issue of them also being able to take points off his own cars.
"This was never going to be our best circuit here, and there are more players coming into the game now," Horner said while hunched over a Risk board, "There is the step that McLaren has made, I think Renault has also made a step and Williams, in fairness, their car also looks very promising.
"So for us the best thing is to have the most cars between us and Brawn as we possibly can."
Despite Hamilton's win, the general consensus is that the Adrian Newey-designed RB5 is the fastest car in the field, with McLaren benefiting from the tight, twisty Hungarian layout in the same way that they rediscovered some form in Monaco, until Hamilton crashed the car in Q1. Horner is confident that a return to faster tracks such as Spa and Monza will see his drivers return to being the class of the field.
"I think once we get back to more classic tracks we'll start to see hopefully a similar performance from our car [to Silverstone and the Nurburgring] and it will be interesting to see where the Brawns are," he said smugly, "I think it will yo-yo, be circuit dependant and there will be some tracks that will really play to the strength of our car."
Horner also believes that the summer break, and associated compulsory factory shutdown, will be good for the team, despite the potential for it to break the momentum they have built up recently.
"I think it's a well deserved respite for the guys. We can't keep pushing them at the rate they are going. They deserve two weeks off and will come back fully charged and pumped up for Valencia onwards.
"The momentum can change so quickly, and the rate of development this year is relentless. Whoever gets the most performance to their car the quickest is going to win this championship.
"We are fully focused on keeping the development flat out until the end of the year."
Red Bull are now just 15.5 points behind Brawn GP in the constructors championship, while Mark Webber has closed to within 18.5 points in the drivers standings. Although the gap remains significant, the rate with which the lead has reduced over the last three races could see the Australian move to the top of the standings by the end of the European season. Possibly.
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