Red Bull says more to come after Austria boost

Fresh from his win in Baku a fortnight ago, Daniel Ricciardo showed hugely encouraging pace at the Red Bull Ring to take a well-earned podium finish after holding off title contender Lewis Hamilton.

And with tracks coming up on the calendar that will not hurt Red Bull as much in the power stakes, team boss Christian Horner is upbeat about the potential over the next few races.

"We're hoping that getting to some more conventional circuits again, we should be able to narrow that gap down," said Horner.

"You can see that when Hamilton got the instruction to turn up the engine for the last 10-15 laps, that was worth between 0.4-0.5s, we could still maintain our position.

"We finished within 10 seconds of the grand prix winner, and without any safety car. We definitely have narrowed the gap and there is more in the pipeline. Everybody in the factory is working tremendously hard.

"Hopefully they will continue to get performance on the car and, at the same time, hopefully on the engine side things will continue to improve."

Red Bull will keep up its approach of bringing regular updates to its car over the next few races, and it believes that Ricciardo is delivering at his best right now.

"It is the RB13 – and 13 is lucky for some and not for others. You can say it has been lucky for Daniel and unlucky for Max so far. So, he is driving incredibly well.

"The way he drove in Austria, with not a single mistake. He nailed the first lap, the pass on Kimi [Raikkonen] was firm but fair and then really, the last 10 laps were all qualifying laps.

"He had to make hay in the second sector to try to at least be out of the DRS zone or 0.8s up the road on the start-finish line to not give Lewis a sniff of being past him. And he did that. Again it was huge pressure, like in Montreal, and he has absolutely delivered."

He added: "He has nailed five podiums in a row now including a grand prix victory at tracks that we didn't feel would be our best. The last three circuits exposed some of our weaknesses too, so to have had two thirds and a win is pretty decent."