Christian Horner is aware the run of success Red Bull Racing is currently enjoying will come to an end at some point.
Horner’s team has again been the dominant force in F1 this season, winning every race, and with Max Verstappen taking a record-breaking 10th successive individual win at the Italian Grand Prix on Sunday.
Its success stretches back to last season, the first under the current generation of regulations – a 36-race period in which Red Bull has won on 31 occasions, with a strike rate of just over 86 percent.
The last non-Red Bull win came at the São Paulo Grand Prix last year when George Russell claimed his maiden grand prix triumph.
“One day we’re going to get beaten,” reasoned Horner following Verstappen’s historic Monza win. “That’s inevitable and guaranteed. It’s just a question of when.
“Obviously we want to make the ‘when’ as far away as we can.
“With every weekend that goes past, there becomes more expectation to keep this amazing run of results.
“To think we’ve won all 14 grands prix (this year), 24 of the last 25, and we’ve managed to win as a team. It’s quite incredible that we’ve managed to keep this momentum going.”
Declaring it “a nice problem to have”, he added: “I’m superstitious – I don’t like empty cabinets!
“We’ve already ordered another cabinet and we’ve already filled it, so we’ll deal with that at the end of the year.”
Horner has been reluctant to entertain the prospect of a perfect season, a feat that has never been achieved in F1 but is looking more realistic as each race passes.
The closest a team has come to achieving such a distinction was McLaren in 1988 when Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost combined to win 15 of the season’s 16 races – missing out on victory at the Italian Grand Prix when Senna tripped over Jean-Louis Schlesser’s Williams in the latter stages.
But while unwilling to entertain the prospect of a perfect campaign outright, he concedes it is added motivation for the team.
“Everything that we’re doing at the moment, we’re making history,” he said.
“It’s not often that you get the chance to do that, and I think as a team, we went through the early years, the building years to get to where we did, and in ’10 to 2013, with Sebastian Vettel.
“We hit some fairly lofty heights, and then we had seven tough years where we never lost focus on what our goal and objective was.
“So to get back into a situation where we’re winning again is very special for the whole team.
“That hard work is paying off.”
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