Newey: Balance to swing at each track

Source : www.autosport.com
By Adam Cooper and Pablo Elizalde

Red Bull's technical chief Adrian Newey is expecting the balance to swing between his team and rival Brawn depending on the nature of the upcoming circuits.

The Red Bull RB5 has been very strong at fast circuits, with Sebastian Vettel dominating the British Grand Prix at Silverstone two weeks ago, when the German led team-mate Mark Webber to a one-two finish as the Brawn drivers were unable to put up a fight.

Red Bull, however, was no match for Brawn's Jenson Button on slow circuits like Monaco, and Newey believes the trend is likely to continue this year.

But, speaking exclusively to AUTOSPORT, Newey claimed Red Bull is pushing hard to improve the situation in slower tracks.

"Certainly our car is not as well suited to the slow speed tracks as the Brawn, and that's something we need to work on," Newey said.

"Monaco is an example of that, where we were certainly of similar race pace to Ferrari, but behind Brawn. We have some ideas on how to improve that, but obviously these things take time.

"We've seen it in the last few years between Ferrari and McLaren. Some circuits suited one, other circuits suited the other, so there's always going to be a degree of dependency on that. We've got one or two ideas to help our slow speed performance."

Newey said his team is still not thinking about the championship, trying instead to focus on each race individually, as Button has a 25-point lead over Vettel.

"It's race by race at the moment," he added. "He has got a helluva lead, but there's a reasonable way to go. Nurburgring is a slower speed circuit than Silverstone, probably without the tyre warm-up issues that some teams. I'm sure it will be lot closer."