Red Bull downplays blown diffuser effect

Ferrari, Renault and Mercedes GP have this weekend all switched to the low exhaust concept put to such good use by Red Bull Racing, while McLaren and Williams are poised to go that way at Silverstone.

And although those outfits are hopeful that the move will give them a big performance boost, Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner thinks that low exhausts are not the single reason why the RB6 is so good.

"It is flattering when people copy you," said Horner, "But, as with all these things, it is very difficult to cherry pick items if they are not designed into the architecture of the car.

"The exhausts are not the fundamental reason why our car is fast. It is a combination of factors, but it is inevitable when you have a competitive car that others will follow suit."

Although Horner concedes that the layout of the Valencia circuit will not play to the strengths of his team's car, he thinks the outfit can still come out of the weekend with a decent haul of points as it fights against main rivals McLaren.

"This track theoretically again should play to their strengths," said Horner. "We have a couple of updates to the car that we feel should help us, and we take comfort from the fact that we were as close to them as we were in Montreal - which we absolutely didn't expect them to be.

"I think it is a long season and we said at the beginning that it would ebb and flow. There have been circuits we have been strong at, like Malaysia and Barcelona, and we've taken advantage of that.

"We got ourselves into a good situation in Bahrain and Australia - but unfortunately a spark plug problem cost us valuable points in Bahrain and a wheel nut issue in Australia cost us a victory there.

"But despite the issues we've had, we are still in very good shape with some circuits coming up that should play to our strengths."

Horner said the faulty seal on Sebastian Vettel's gearbox that forced him to slow in Canada had been changed - so the German should not require a new unit for this weekend.

"Everything looks fine on it," he said. "Thankfully the precautions we took at the end of the race in Montreal looked worthwhile. There is no damage done to the gearbox, and the seal that was causing the issue was replaced, as is permitted to be. The gearbox has run on the dyno and looks fine."