Red Bull team principal Christian Horner says his outfit will give Mercedes a closer-run contest than they did last year come the new Formula One season.
Mercedes won the Constructors Championship last season and although Red Bull were runners-up, largely due to a breakout season from young Australian driver Daniel Ricciardo, they were still nearly 300 points behind the title-winners.
That followed a poor pre-season testing session in Jerez, Spain, with the UK-based Red Bull managing a mere 21 laps in four days.
However, Red Bull improved as the campaign wore on, with Ricciardo winning three races.
But although new regulations prevent development of the engine, teams can fine tune their systems via the use of 'tokens' and Horner expects Red Bull to push Mercedes from the off this season.
"Mercedes are the benchmark, as the reigning champions, as favourites for this year after having a significant advantage at the end of last year," Horner said on Tuesday, ahead of this season's first test in Jerez from Sunday.
"Hopefully we will have made significant inroads into that advantage, but the question is 'What have they done over the winter? What have the other teams done?'.
"But we have an opportunity this year. You can strategically upgrade over the year on your different power units," added Horner, with French manufacturer Renault supplying Red Bull's engines.
"Renault are taking an aggressive development approach to this year, and strategically we just need to decide when we use the tokens in the four engines we have available to us."
With four-time world champion Sebastien Vettel having joined Ferrari, Ricciardo now finds himself the senior of Red Bull's two drivers alongside new boy Daniil Kvyat.
"The target this year is to win more races and have better results for the title fight, a proper one because last year I was hanging on by a thread," said Ricciardo.
"The engine development changes are going to definitely help us.
"Everyone is going to improve, that's a fact, but you'd like to think Mercedes' room for improvement is small because they made so much of it last year.
"I hope I'm right and they don't have a 50 per cent step on top of what they already have, but there is certainly more room for us and Ferrari to make that gap."
Share
