Red Bull team principal Christian Horner admitted that despite a perfect first weekend for the team, it’s too early into the season to say the Milton Keynes-based outfit is miles ahead of the competition.
Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez made a clean sweep of their competitors in Bahrain, taking P1 and P2, as well as the fastest lap of the race. Verstappen even clinched the pole position on Friday.
If other teams seemed to be able to attack Red Bull ahead of the Bahrain GP, that wasn’t the case on Saturday. At least, Ferrari managed to get a little bit closer, especially with Carlos Sainz, who wasn’t too far behind Perez.
Despite a dominant race though, Horner said that only by judging the first weekend it’s not possible to say that Red Bull is already unreachable.
“You can’t read too much into a single event, because of the nature of the circuit, the temperature, and the fact that we are able to carry over a soft tire into the race,” explained Horner.
“We were surprised that others didn’t do [that]. It sort of distorted, perhaps, the back end of the stint. Nonetheless, it was a dominant display and great to get that maximum score.”
The Britton continued saying that he feels the field will get even closer and Red Bull cannot “take anything for granted” and must keep working.
“We have a sample of one race and I have the feeling that the field is going to concertina this year. So I don’t think you can take anything for granted out of this one race on a specific surface, specific conditions.
“I’ve been in this business too long to draw too many conclusions from a single race. It’s a fantastic start and we enjoy this moment.
“But it’s a long season, many different venues, different challenges, different conditions. And what we saw in the testing is things are closer.
“We got it right this weekend. We took the right tires into the race. We executed a perfect race with both cars and we got a great finish. But I think that it will converge.”