Horner: Pressure bigger to win again

Sebastian Vettel delivered Red Bull Racing's first F1 victory with a dominant performance in the wet Shanghai race, finishing ahead of his team-mate Mark Webber.

And although the win has fulfilled one of the team's main criteria after more than four years in grand prix racing, Horner is adamant that it will not make things any easier for them in the future.

When asked by AUTOSPORT if the victory took the pressure off the team, Horner said: "No, not at all. It does the reverse because the pressure is now on to repeat it. Your expectations change, so a result like this really puts us on the map and people take us seriously now."

Early season indications suggest that Red Bull's RB5 could be the second quickest car behind Brawn GP - even though it does not have a double-decker diffuser design.

Having shone so well without one, there are suggestions than when the design comes on tap at the Monaco or Turkish Grand Prix, the team could leapfrog to the front of the field.

Horner is more cautious, however, and thinks it is too early to say what improvement it will bring.

"I think the car has a great deal of potential," he said. "We have seen that from very early on. We know that there is more performance to come.

"The underside of the car is obviously the most powerful aerodynamic tool on the car so hopefully we can only extract more performance. But you know nothing is easy, it has to be integrated within our package, our solution, which is quite different to everybody else's. But today demonstrates what the team's potential is."

He added: "It is too early to say whether it is a championship challenge, but we are firmly on the scoreboard. Next week is a completely different challenge and the long straights will probably favour the KERS cars more.

"We know we've got a good package, we know we have got good drivers in the car; we know we have got more to come, but the fight back from the big teams is not to be underestimated. They will push extremely hard and we just have to do the same with the resources we have got."

Red Bull boss Dietrich Mateschitz watched the race from his home near Salzburg, having just returned from a holiday in Fiji. He was delighted with the result - and praised the efforts of every team member.

"The RB5 of Adrian (Newey) and his team is probably the most innovative and best car in the field of teams that interpreted the rules as we did," he said.

"We are now looking forward to have a new solution for the diffuser hopefully available for Monaco. The success belongs to the whole team and is based on our effort to bring in the best people - technicians, engineers, and drivers.

"A key point was to improve the reliability of our cars. Sebastian clearly showed what enormous amount of talent he has. Mark proved that he belongs to the best drivers in F1 and that the combination of him with Sebastian is the ideal situation for us. It was intended to have two drivers pushing themselves to the very limits and that is paying off now."