Red Bull Racing not expecting to resume its dominance of Formula 1 despite Bahrain Grand Prix win

Four teams have taken wins already this year, with reigning champion Sebastian Vettel bouncing back from a tricky start to the year to hold off Kimi Raikkonen's Lotus for victory in a thrilling race in Bahrain on Sunday.

But rather than believe that Vettel's victory marks the start of a resurgence of form for Red Bull, team principal Christian Horner reckons that regular success in 2012 is going to be hard for anyone to achieve.

"I think this season is going to ebb and flow," he said. "It is going to be about being consistent in races you can't win and taking the maximum out of them. And in the races that you can win you need to deliver.

"I am sure with this championship, with 16 races to go, we are going to see a lot more variation. And to predict the Bahrain performance just a week after what happened in China would have been tricky."

Horner added that Red Bull is slightly surprised to be in the lead of both championships at this stage of the campaign, but he believes that is proof of the importance of consistency this year.

"We've consistently managed to be scoring points in the first four races," he said. "We have had four fourth places with Mark [Webber] and a second, a first, a fifth and an 11th [with Vettel].

"That puts us in the lead of both the drivers' and the constructors' championship after the flyaways, which was not what we were expecting after the first couple of races. So it just shows if you concentrate on your teamwork that it can pay dividends."

Vettel's victory in Bahrain came just a few days after the German said he was sceptical about his team's chances of a win without improvements to the car.

When asked what changed over the weekend, Horner said: "We've made a bit of progress here so this weekend it's a different track and different conditions.

"In all honesty coming here I thought it might be a circuit that didn't play to our strengths.

"We've now got the chance of a small respite with a test in Mugello, and we can look at the data from these first four races and see what we've learned from them."