Horner calls on Red Bull to ‘keep turning the screw’ on Mercedes after four wins in a row for his team

Red Bull boss Christian Horner issued a rallying cry to his team to keep “turning the screw” on rivals Mercedes, after the team took their fourth consecutive victory at the Styrian Grand Prix.

After their strong pre-season testing showing that saw them comfortably outpace Mercedes, Red Bull appeared to drop the ball at the start of the season, allowing Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes to win three of the first four races. But a raft of upgrades have seen the team claim the four Grand Prix victories since Monaco – with Horner keen to see Red Bull press home their advantage, with the team now 40 points clear of Mercedes in the constructors’.

READ MORE: The ‘shark tooth’ diffuser helping Red Bull inch ahead – and why they’re finding more gains than Mercedes

“We've just got to take things one step at a time,” said Horner after Verstappen’s Styrian Grand Prix win – which witnessed the first back-to-back poles and back-to-back victories of the Dutch driver’s career. “The team's performing incredibly well. Max is, I think, driving with great maturity and consistency and we've just got to keep turning the screw and just keep our heads down, keep doing what we're doing and just keep doing the basics well.

“[The Styrian Grand Prix] was our strongest and most complete performance so far this year,” Horner added. “That's the most dominant win that we've had so far this year against Mercedes, so that's very encouraging… Our first pole here and the win, it's been a great... two weekends so far.”

Horner, meanwhile, also appeared to question rival Mercedes boss Toto Wolff’s claims that his team had stopped development on their W12 challenger for this season – a claim which Mercedes’ Technical Director James Allison also cast doubt on when speaking on the post-Styrian Grand Prix episode of our F1 Nation podcast, where he said that the team were working on “a reasonable number of things that are going to make our car faster in the coming races”.

READ MORE: Allison confirms Mercedes ARE planning W12 upgrades this season as title battle with Red Bull hots up

“What Mercedes do is very much their business,” said Horner. “So we're just focused on ourselves. We know that Toto likes to throw the light somewhere else, so I can't believe that they'll go through the rest of this year without putting a single component on the car.

“But as I say, what we can do is focus on our own job. Of course, it’s a balancing act between this year and next year, but if that means we've all got to work a bit harder than the other teams, we are fully up for it.”