Red Bull needs to find half a second - Horner

Christian Horner has challenged his team to find half a second of performance to fight with Mercedes and Ferrari at the front of the field following a disappointing Australian Grand Prix.

The opening round of the season saw Red Bull more than a second off the pace in qualifying, with Max Verstappen fifth on the grid and Daniel Ricciardo crashing out in Q3. Ricciardo had a race to forget as he started two laps down and later retired, but Verstappen had better race pace and followed Kimi Raikkonen closely to finish in the same position he had started.

"To be honest with you, Mercedes I don't think we're that far away from," Horner said. "We've got about half a second to find. Ferrari have been very impressive [in Melbourne], probably had the quickest car.

"We definitely had the third-quickest car, and we've got to find a good half a second to get into that fight with the cars ahead. Max was pushing Kimi hard all race but we didn't have the pace of certainly [Sebastian] Vettel or [Lewis] Hamilton.

"The problem is the cars here seemed quite sensitive in dirty air so Max... we didn't see his true potential in clean air. I felt that we had Kimi's pace and I think we've got a good half second to find at this track to get on terms with the cars ahead."

Horner is keen to see Red Bull immediately closing the gap over the coming races in China and Bahrain, and believes it will be important for his team to address the car's sensitivity to setup changes in the immediate future.

"I think we want to progress. We've clearly had the third fastest car [in Australia], we want to move closer to the cars ahead over the next couple of races. So everybody in the factory and the team will be working very hard to close that gap.

"I think certainly we need to broaden the window. I mean, it's quite a narrow window at the moment but at least the car is reacting to change. So we need to understand that and obviously build on that."