Christian Horner asseses 2010

Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner believes any one of Jenson Button’s three title rivals can still overturn the Briton’s season-long points advantage in the final five races of the season.

Despite claiming just 11 points in the previous five rounds, Brawn driver Button retains a 16-point lead at the head of the drivers’ standings ahead of team-mate Rubens Barrichello, with RBR duo Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber a further three and four and a half points back respectively.


But asked if he thought Button remained the clear favourite given he had the points on the board, Horner said: “His form obviously has been not great in the last few races so I’d say it is all open.

“You have four guys there who are going to have an interesting run-in to the end of the series.



“Both our guys are still in the hunt and Rubens obviously over the last few weekends has taken 10 points out of Jenson so he is going to be feeling pretty optimistic as well.

“So it is a four-horse battle.”

Having slashed Brawn’s once huge constructors’ points lead to just 15.5 heading into the Valencia/Belgium double-header, Red Bull left Spa 23.5 points adrift largely as a result of having failed to score any points at the previous weekend’s race.

Horner though feels his team have been the stronger overall package in recent months, giving him optimism about its chances heading into the decisive phase of the season.

“They [Brawn] have not been having a good run,” he said.

“Obviously they had the win in Valencia, but certainly Jenson since Turkey I don’t think we have seen him on the podium.

“We have done a bit of damage early on at Silverstone and in Germany, a podium in Hungary, a podium here [Spa] with alternating drivers which therefore again endorsees [our policy that] it would be wrong to back one driver at the moment.

“There is still a long way in the championship to go and the points are concertinaing and I think we’ll get an exciting finish to the series.”

Heading to high-speed Monza next week, however, Horner concedes the team will have to run its RB5 with lower downforce levels than some of its rivals to compensate for a relative straight-line speed deficit, the team having been less competitive in the fast sectors one and three at Spa.

Nevertheless with Monza also containing some fast, sweeping corners, the RBR team principal still expects his squad to still have the speed to challenge its title rival.

“Monza historically is a power track and I think the guys with the KERS are obviously going to be pretty strong there,” Horner said.

“So we will probably have to run a little bit less downforce but there are still some quick corners there and I still think we can take on the Brawns there.”