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Red Bull urges Vettel to keep head up

Sebastian Vettel has been urged not to get disheartened by his continued frustrations in Formula 1, after a mistake behind the safety car in Hungary cost him victory and the chance to lead the world championship

Team principal Christian Horner believes that Vettel should concentrate on the positives from a weekend when Red Bull Racing was the dominant force.

"He's obviously frustrated after this race, but he wears his heart on his sleeve," said Horner. "You could see on the podium he was desperately disappointed, but it's part of a learning curve.

"There are seven races to go, he's scored a lot of points compared to some of his rivals here, and it's a great team result. First and third has given us great points going into the summer break."

He added: "He can take a lot of heart from the fact he scored a lot of points and one of his main rivals in Lewis didn't score, Jenson scored very few. We took a massive amount of McLaren in the constructors', and it was a great team result.

"Mark [Webber] drove an absolutely outstanding race. We gave him a target, we said 'look, you need 20 seconds', and he went out and delivered it.

"He even found time on the radio to say he enjoyed lapping Michael. It was an awesome performance."

Although Vettel was deeply disappointed with the result, Horner believes the German should channel his emotions into something positive.

"Unfortunately here didn't go his way, but he's had a black cloud following him for most of the season," he said. "It's all about the points at the end of the year, and we've Mark leading, with Seb right up behind Lewis, and the target is very much to get both ahead, and to try and stretch our lead in the constructors'.

"Part of the emotion is what makes him so strong, and he obviously has to channel that into the car.

"We're very fortunate we've two very committed, very charged drivers, and that's one of the strengths of this team."

Horner also thinks that Red Bull's result in Hungary, which lifted the team to the head of the title table, has given his the squad a big morale boost ahead of the summer break.

"We're now coming to tracks where engine power will play a significant role in Spa and Monza," he said. "But it was important for us to have achieved a big result, which is what we have managed."

Horner denied any talk that Vettel had been ordered to hold Fernando Alonso up behind the safety car, and reckons the matter boiled down to driver error thanks to problems with the radio.

"We'd had a few radio issues with Seb where it wasn't clear if he could fully hear us or not, which is why I spoke to him a couple of times in the race.

"But he knew he had made a mistake because he immediately radioed his engineer. It was one of those things that for whatever reason caught him out.

"What would have been a relatively comfortable victory turned into a third place, but on a day when Lewis didn't score any points and Jenson scored very few.

"So it's a great team finish with a dominant victory and third."

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