Coulthard: RBR must produce results now

Red Bull Racing have boosted their technical team considerably in recent years, including high profile signings such as former McLaren designer Adrian Newey and former Honda technical director Geoff Willis.

The team achieved their best constructors' championship result yet last season, taking fifth position after McLaren lost their points, and Coulthard is keen to gain further ground in 2008.

"Obviously we want to go forwards," he said at the launch of the new RB4 chassis.

"We were fifth in the constructors' - one of those positions was by default, but nonetheless it was an improvement over what we'd had in previous years and we beat two manufacturer teams.

"That doesn't happen by accident, it shows that we're on the right track and clearly we want to go forward.

"The team has grown by 200 people, the investment from Red Bull is there, and now we have to deliver higher results."

Coulthard drove the RB4 for the first time at Jerez this morning, but said it was too soon to draw conclusions about the car - especially given the damp conditions at the Spanish track.

"Obviously it's a new car and it's way too early to say anything other than its basic functions are what we expect," he said. "We need to be on track when it's dry with slicks to get a better feel for it."

But he said his hope for the new chassis was that it combined the strong elements of the 2007 car with greater aerodynamic efficiency.

"We couldn't quite achieve the top speed and get the downforce level," said Coulthard. "If you look at McLaren and Ferrari, they've always got good top speeds, and they've got the downforce in the corners. So that's what we need to be targeting."

Red Bull admitted that their poor reliability record in 2007 proved very costly, but Coulthard joked that the RB4 had shown promise in this regard during the brief shakedown test.

"We've had a 100 percent reliability so far, so things are looking good..." he said. "I have been at a few shakedowns where we struggled to do an installation lap even.

"Obviously the key time is next week in Valencia and beyond."