While delighted to have quelled Mercedes’ “annihilation”, Red Bull is expecting them to “bounce back” at some point.
The Brackley-based team has only won three times in the first eight races this season, tieing their lowest number over that period in the hybrid era with 2018.
Mercedes is also currently on their longest winless streak since 2013 having not won in four races since Lewis Hamilton’s victory in Spain.
On the contrary for Red Bull, it almost feels like 2013 again with the team currently leading both championships, and the impact on morale is noticeable.
“It has been a while [since we were on top] but this is what we have been working for and to go to races knowing you have got the chance of winning, it just puts petrol in everybody’s tank,” team boss Christian Horner said.
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“The whole factory and the whole team is fully motivated and loving this competition. Let’s see where it ends up.
“Mercedes, let’s not forget, has won everything for seven years and it has been seven long years so to get ourselves back into a competitive position, and to give our drivers a competitive car, particularly with a pandemic over the last 18 months and so on is fantastic.
“I think it is good for us, it is good for the sport and I hope it goes all the way down to the wire.”
Given how difficult the hybrid era has been for Red Bull, Horner was asked how this season felt compared to the team’s last championship-winning year eight years ago.
“It is so long ago I can’t remember how it felt the last time,” he joked.
“We went through an incredibly successful patch for four years. At the time, everyone was saying ‘you guys are dominating everything and it is boring’. You remember that two of those championships went to the final race against Fernando [Alonso] in 2010 and 2012.
“What we have seen since then has been… not domination, it has been annihilation.
“We have won races in pretty much every year since but they have had to be opportunistic wins at circuits that have suited us or through clever strategy or thinking on our feet.
“But to put a sustained campaign together, it just puts a lot of wind in our sails and we have missed that winning feeling. You can feel it in the team.
“It is just testimony to how hard the team has worked over the last 12 months, and particularly through the pandemic.”
Of course, some will argue that Red Bull’s success is only due to Mercedes being unintentionally reined in by F1’s new floor regulations for 2021, which impacted low-rake designs more than high-rake ones.
But Horner doesn’t think that tells the full story.
“When you look at the dominance their car had last year – and let’s not forget 60 per cent of the car is carryover – it’s the same chassis they were winning all of those races last year,” he said.
“So the team has done a phenomenal job and we’ve just got to keep that momentum going because Mercedes is such a strong team.
“It’s only a matter of time before they bounce back but we’ve just got to keep doing what we’re doing.”