Rivals ready to challenge Red Bull supremacy

Ferrari and McLaren may not have won Sunday’s Turkish Grand Prix, but both departed the Istanbul Park circuit determined to demonstrate that with more updates to their cars they will mount a serious challenge to Red Bull and Sebastian Vettel.

The 23-year-old defending world champion reeled off his third win in four races this year to open a clear 34-point lead at the top of the drivers’ title race, but, like his boss, conceded that he and his team will not always enjoy such comfortable afternoons.

Team chief Christian Horner said: “The bottom line is that things can change so quickly. Fernando (Alonso) gave us a hard time in Turkey and nobody else seemed to be in the same ballpark, but two weeks or three weeks ago it was McLaren and then it looked like Mercedes had made a step.

“So once you hit the sweet spot, there is quite a big performance return from that, and I think we cannot afford to be complacent.”

Horner’s caution came as Ferrari began to show signs of growing confidence in their ability to bounce back from a poor start following their first podium finish, claimed in Turkey by two-times champion Spaniard Alonso, behind the Red Bull men Vettel and Mark Webber.

The Italians ran into problems with calibration issues at their Maranello wind tunnel, but now seem to have resolved them and made some progress.

Team chief Stefano Domenicali said: “At least, what we have seen last weekend is going in the right direction and I expect another step at Barcelona.

“But what I am saying to my people is – don’t expect the others to stay asleep. All the other competitors will react and improve and this year will be a very challenging season.”

McLaren also expect to be faster and more competitive at the Circuit de Catalunya and could be joined among the front-runners again by Mercedes.

In Istanbul, Lewis Hamilton and fellow-Briton Jenson Button finished fourth and sixth respectively.

But team chief Martin Whitmarsh said: “Frankly, we didn’t bring all the developments we wanted here so we weren’t quite as quick as we wanted to be.

“We didn’t quite achieve what we wanted in qualifying, then if you lose places at the start of the race it’s very difficult to recover from that. The weekend has been a bit tricky really so I think to leave Turkey with Lewis (Hamilton) still second in the championship is a reasonable situation.”