Red Bull’s Christian Horner believes his team are in a position to overcome their late start to the 2016 season, which has come about by a lack of engine supply.
With just four months until the start of pre-season testing, teams are approaching a deadline to have their chassis design at a relatively advanced stage, but Red Bull, without knowing what engine they’ll be using, are at a huge disadvantage compared with their rivals.
Horner believes they’ll be able to overcome that as long as something is confirmed within the next few weeks, otherwise it will massively impact their season and possibly their future in Formula 1.
“It’s my job to get to work as soon as we know what engine we will get. But at the moment we still don’t know,” said Horner.
“It’s clear that by now the other teams have an advantage over us. But the quality at Red Bull is so high that we would be able to cope with that.
“Everybody is highly motivated and we want to win again. But equally we don’t want to continue with the form we’ve had for one and a half years now.”
However the Briton conceded that time is running out: “We are in October already. Over at Milton Keynes our engineers are already shuffling their feet. They want and need to know what is going to happen with our RB12 car.
“When do I want to have a solution? Two weeks ago! Adrian Newey told me: ‘Christian, we need an answer and soon. I know what happens with the front and the rear parts of the car. But we need to know what will happen in between.’
“You have to bear in mind: it’s not only about the engine. We also have to think about cooling and this has an influence on the design of the sidepods, for example, as has the gearbox on the rear design.”
