RBR confident of step forward in 2008

The team took their best constructors' championship result to date in 2007, being classified fifth after McLaren's penalty, and fighting hard for fourth place with Williams.

The latter part of the season saw notable gains by Red Bull, and at the team's 2008 launch at Jerez, Horner said his initial aim was to pick up where they had left off at the end of 2007.

"We were competitive in the final three races of last year and we'll be looking to start from that point with the new car," said Horner.

"Ferrari and McLaren are obviously going to be extremely competitive again and are the benchmark, and then I predict a pretty tight group thereafter, which will hopefully consist of ourselves, BMW, Renault, probably Williams, and who knows with Toyota and Honda.

"It's very difficult to make predictions at this time of year. We're confident we've made good progress with this car. How good? We'll see in Melbourne. But we're happy with the progress that we've seen over the RB3."

He believes that continuity will play a crucial role for Red Bull this season, as the team go into their second year with Renault power and with Adrian Newey as chief technical officer.

"The group is working together much more cohesively with the benefit of continuity with both people and engine suppliers," said Horner.

"This has been the smoothest winter that I've seen at Red Bull and you can start to see the strength of the group coming to the surface now.

"It's not down to two or three people. We've 570 people in Red Bull Racing, which is an average sized team in Formula One. You rely on all of the departments making their contribution to the performance of the car. But I'm confident that we will see a step forward this year."

Newey was also unwilling to make a firm prediction about RBR's 2008 potential.

"I don't want to put a number on it to be honest," he said.

"We can all do our simulations through wind tunnel results and vehicle dynamics and use our simulations, but simulations are exactly that. There can be things in there that are not known or don't behave in the way that has been predicted by the wind tunnel.

"We expect a step forward but I am not willing to put a number on it."

He shared Horner's belief that the team were making progress as their resources increased, but added that this was still an ongoing process.

"It takes time for these things," said Newey. "As a team we are still a very young team, and we still don't have all the infrastructure that all the top teams have because it takes time, you cannot just go down to the shops and buy the simulation departments.

"It takes time and we are still in the process of building up. As long as we are building then things will be moving forward.

"Already we have made steps forwards, in terms of engineering, the departments are working better together.

"Geoff Willis's arrival has made a huge contribution, and Geoff's other big contribution has been in terms of changing things around to help our productivity and our reliability."