Horner disagrees with Marko on Red Bull chances

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner disagrees with Helmut Marko's assessment that the team is not yet ready to compete for world championships, insisting that if the team of the energy drinks manufacturer can improve their reliability from last year they should be 'on par' with the other top teams.

Last week, Red Bull's head of driver development, Marko, claimed that the team would have trouble competing if Mercedes improve on their engine from last year.

"I don't think we're in a position to be able to compete for the world championship," he told Auto Motor und Sport

"The Renault engine should be more reliable and stronger in 2018, and we will fight with a competitive chassis. But if Mercedes create a new engine, the question is knowing if they will have even more of an advantage, but we should be closer to them."

However, Horner reckons that the team has it what it takes to make waves at the top of the rankings, even if the likes of Mercedes and Ferrari improve on their successes from last year, but did say he expects McLaren to improve.

"If we've learned the lessons of last year, and if reliability improves, then I see no reason why we shouldn't be on par," Horner said.

"McLaren is a great team and we look forward to racing against them. But we made great progress especially in the second half of last season and we hope to take that momentum into 2018.

"The rules are more or less the same, so there are many lessons we can draw from 2017 with the development of our new car."

Horner revealed that Red Bull's main asset was their impressive driver line-up of Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen, but mentioned the latter and not the former when predicting a future champion.

"Sebastian Vettel won four titles for us before he was 30," he told Speed Week.

"Lewis did his four and is only 32. For me, Max is a champion. You can see which drivers are outstanding and Max is certainly one of them."