Newey: Too early for title ambitions

The team's RB5 has pushed Brawn duo Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello hard so far this year - and is the only car other than the Brawn to have won a race.

But although such form points to a serious world championship bid, chief technical officer Adrian Newey is wary of his team changing its focus to start thinking about a title charge.

"For me we are just concentrating on trying to do our job race by race, and not really starting to think about championships," he said when asked by AUTOSPORT about his feelings on the fight with Brawn. "It is still a bit too early in the game."

Newey is well aware that once teams start thinking about the championship then the willingness to take risks becomes less.

"It is good for morale of the team if you do well, and it means people are more willing to put that extra bit in there, than perhaps if you were doing poorly," he said.

"The classic thing if you are in a championship battle is to become slightly more risk averse, but we haven't really gone that way at the moment - we are still seeing if we can win races, and that is what we would like to do."

With the fight between Brawn and Red Bull now likely to revolve around the development race in improving their cars, Newey admits he is enthused by this year's regulation changes.

"I do like regulation changes because it gives an opportunity to do new things to explore new avenues, and to try and do it in hopefully an intelligent way - not relying on lots of iterations and endless hours in the wind tunnel," he said.

"If you get into the position which we were in at the end of last season, where we had effectively almost complete stable regulations since 2006 and no significant change since 1998, then it becomes more and more of an arms race of it really being lots of iterations in the wind tunnel and CFD rather than new ideas.

"At that point, size becomes probably the most important factor. If you have something that is completely new, then ideas and understanding can have the possibility to outwit size - and that is what is exciting about rule changes."