The Red Bull Racing team will be in 'damage limitation' mode for the Italian Grand Prix in two week's time, according to their team principal Christian Horner, with the super-fast Monza track not suiting their RB6 car's strengths.
Red Bull have generally been the class of the field at most race tracks so far in 2010, but with the car suffering from the deficiency of an underpowered Renault V8 engine, the Monza track was always earmarked as one where the team would struggle.
McLaren's Mercedes engine is reported to be the most powerful in the current field, and Horner admitted on Tuesday that Monza would be "McLaren territory".
"Hungary was a circuit that played to the strengths of our car - no straights and lots of corners," Horner explained tediously, "At Spa there were not many corners and very long straight sectors.
"Singapore should be good for us, Japan should be good for us, Korea should be okay for us. We know Spa and Monza will be McLaren territory, and we just have to limit the damage as we did with Mark in Belgium.
"To come away with a second place was a very big result for us."
The Monza race is the second of the two races that Red Bull had targeted as being their weaker events.
Despite taking pole position at the Spa-Francorchamps track for last weekend's race, Mark Webber was not able to live with the pace of Lewis Hamilton's McLaren in the race itself.
Horner did, though, insist that Red Bull would still be in the hunt for a strong result at Monza, even if the outright win might be beyond them.
"Monza, for sure, will be a tough weekend for us. But we performed better than expected in Montreal and Valencia this year," Horner pointed out.
"And, if you compare the tracks where McLaren have performed badly at – like Hungary – where Mark lapped Jenson, at a track like Spa that doesn't suit us we still managed to get second place out of it. I am very encouraged by what we have managed to achieve.
"I think Monza will be our weakest circuit of the year arguably. A bit of rain there might be nice and then we go back to circuits that will much more suit our car."
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