Red Bull unveil car to defend title

Red Bull revealed its new car for 2011, with high hopes of repeating last season’s outstanding performance in which it won both the constructors’ and drivers’ titles.

Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel became the sport’s youngest champion at 23 when he triumphed in the last Grand Prix of the season, in Abu Dhabi in November, to take the title in dramatic fashion as team-mate Australian Mark Webber finished third overall.

For 2011, the British-based Austrian-funded Red Bull has retained the pair, who took to the Ricardo Tormo race track later for the first day of testing of the new RB7 car.

“We are very lucky in that we have possibly the strongest line-up on the grid,” said team principal Christian Horner.

“The 2011 season is going to be really gruelling, but it’s going to be fantastic. But as long as we can apply what we learned from 2010 and give it our best shot, the results will take care of themselves – as they did last year.”

Vettel said the 2010 season was “a proud memory. But now it’s 2011, and there’s another job to do, so we move to the next challenge, which is trying to do the same thing again.”

Mercedes GP team boss Norbert Haug said Michael Schumacher will improve on his disappointing performance in his comeback season last year as the team now has a new “more sophisticated” car.

The 42-year-old German failed to reach the podium in 19 races in 2010 and was completely outshone by team-mate Nico Rosberg who finished the campaign 70 points ahead of Schumacher.

“Michael needs to adapt again, it’s a different Formula One that he was used to before,” Haug told a news conference at the Ricardo Tormo circuit where teams began three days of testing yesterday.

“He will have a better year when our car is competitive and I think we have every reason to believe that we have a car that will be a big step forward compared to last year’s.”