Red Bull still revelling in maiden win

Red Bull Renault scored a stunning one-two result last time out in Shanghai and while both race winner Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber ran well today in practice for the Bahrain Grand Prix, the team were rightly savouring the break-out result from last Sunday.

"It was a fantastic result for the team, for Red Bull, for Mr Mateschitz who has put so much effort into the teams and into Formula One," declared Team Principal Christian Horner today at the circuit.

"It was a massive high - a monkey off our back to get the first pole, first win and a one-two. We have had great support from our partners. A quite good engine and I thank Flavio (Briatore) and Renault for that. It has just been a great week and the whole team in Milton Keynes have worked tremendously hard to achieve that result. We have just got to do it again now. We did not have long to enjoy it and we are focussed on the next one."

One concern a week ago in China was the driveshaft failures that compromised both drivers ahead of - and in – qualifying, but Horner is confident that the situation has been resolved and the RB5 package will have no such issues at the Sakhir circuit.

“We believed that it was a batch problem,” he explained. “We had done over 6000km of racing and testing and there was no problem in the race on Sunday and no problems at all here, so it looks like a rogue batch.”

While the similarly powered Fernando Alonso was second fastest today for the Renault team, Flavio Briatore was making no bones about the fact that Red Bull has simply done a better job than his team this year.

When asked what makes the difference between the pace of the RB5 and the R29, the Italian Team Principal simply replied ‘the chassis’ as the Anglo-French team pins their hopes on development of the diffuser.

“Red Bull at this moment do a better job,” Briatore explained. “We have no excuse. What we need is to improve the chassis and we have our first version of the diffuser which is not what we believe is the best but at least we have done something. In Barcelona we will have another step and I am sure in Monte Carlo we will have a big one. We started very late like everybody and we try to have the short cut and to be ready, at least in Monte Carlo, to be competitive and to fight for the podium and to win races.”

Red Bull Racing already seems to have the advantage however and are in a similar position with regards to aero updates. The Milton Keynes-based team targeting Monte Carlo for the introduction of its ‘Brawn-style’ double diffuser.