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Laurence Edmondson, F1 Editor
SUZUKA, Japan — Christian Horner has said he doubts Red Bull will ever be able to repeat the success it has had this season after his team won the constructors’ championship at the Japanese Grand Prix with six rounds remaining.
Red Bull has won 15 of the 16 races so far this season, with its only defeat coming one week ago at the Singapore Grand Prix.
Asked how the team will follow up on such a dominant year, the Red Bull team principal said there was very little realistic room for improvement.
“To repeat a season like this, it’s a golden moment for the team, to do better than we are doing is impossible,” Horner said. “We are riding a wave and we want to ride that wave as long as we can.
“But F1 is a fast moving business, you see how quickly teams move up and move down, and Singapore demonstrated that there can be zero complacency. We have to keep pushing the boundaries.”
Such is Red Bull’s dominance this year that Max Verstappen alone, without the points of teammate Sergio Perez, would be leading the constructors’ championship by 95 points.
But Horner paid tribute to the entire team and said the work of each department at its factory in Milton Keynes had contributed to the remarkable level of success this year.
“It’s unbelievable,” he said. “Last year was a very strong year for us but to have kept that momentum rolling with the challenges we have had is testimony to all the men and women of the team that have worked tirelessly to have produced a car as competitive as we have had, and that Max has made such good use of.
“Formula One is one of the biggest team sports in the world and it’s a result of all the 22 different departments, all the support functions, all of the backroom staff that have worked crazy hours, made sacrifices to produce these types of cars and this kind of result.
“Everybody is invested in one thing and that’s the car. To produce the kind of car we have and achieve these kind of results is an incredible performance.”