Horner delighted points debut

Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner admitted the double points finish the team scored in the Australian Grand Prix on Sunday was more than he had ever dreamed of in the build up to the new season.

Horner joined Red Bull at the start of January to replace former Jaguar Racing boss Tony Purnell after new owner Dietrich Mateschitz took an axe to the old management structure at the team.

The team have had little time to adjust to the new faces but, having been sold to Mateschitz by Ford as a going concern, they immediately benefited from the development work that continued throughout last year.

"This was a fantastic debut race for Red Bull Racing,"said a beaming Horner after David Coulthard ran at the front for half the race and finished fourth, three places ahead of team-mate Christian Klien.

"David made a great start, got up to second and although we thought we would contain the Ferrari to finish fourth and have Christian in seventh is a fantastic result.

"It would have been great to hold onto the podium but, with no retirements, to be up there on merit, well, if you had said on the way over we would be fourth and seventh I would have taken it. Now we look forward to Malaysia.”

Red Bull had been tipped to make a mark by leading team boss Sir Frank Williams in the build up to the season and his predictions proved correct as the team's new RB01 machine had the pace to keep up with the usual front-runners.

A fortunately timed rain shower during the Saturday afternoon first qualifying session helped Coulthard and Klien by placing them fifth and sixth on the grid respectively.

But Horner insisted that while the results were a dream the fact that his drivers were able to match the lead pace came as no surprise after a strong winter testing programme.

"We had good pre-season testing, we are here to compete and we put some solid foundations down today,"he said. "It was a good race, from our point of view, and it was good to not see Ferrari running away at the front.”