"Ricciardo has been a sensation": Red Bull boss Horner gives his verdict on 2014

Red Bull boss Christian Horner has given his verdict on the 2014 season, heaping praise on Mercedes and on Daniel Ricciardo and underlining that next year's Red Bull has had the full Adrian Newey treatment, despite the technical guru deciding to take a step back from day to day F1 involvement.

Horner is full of praise for Daniel Ricciardo who outscored his illustrious team mate Sebastian Vettel, three wins to none, by 238 points to 167 and outqualified Vettel over the season,

"I think Daniel has been the sensation of the year to be honest with you. The way he's raced, he's wheel to wheel racing, his speed, his composure in the car, he's looked like he's belonged at that level. I think he's out done all of our expectations and even his own."

Separately, speaking in a BBC TV interview to be broadcast over Christmas, Horner says that Ricciardo's speed was "probably a factor" in the German's decision to leave Red Bull for Ferrari and he cites Ricciardo's pass on the German in Italy as a defining moment,

"It was at a time where after the summer break, knowing Sebastian as well as I do, I could see he was very distracted and it was obvious something was at the back of his mind.

"And I think Ferrari were courting him quite hard and around Spa/Monza was the time he made the decision to do something different next year."

Back to the end of season review note, worth noting is that there is a conciliatory tone to his rhetoric when talking about Mercedes; whereas in recent months he has been outspoken in saying that their dominance is bad for the sport, here he praises them for their success and says calls their power unit "hugely impressive. They've done an amazing job to come up with such a refined and complete package."

Horner has had quite a bit of negative reaction from fans to his previous comments, especially as Red Bull dominated the sport for four years prior to 2014, perhaps this has led to his change of tone.

Behind the scenes efforts continue to try to change the regulations to allow the Renault, Ferrari and Honda engineers to make more development steps in season during 2016, with Horner suggesting a simplified hybrid system and Bernie Ecclestone proposing a return to V8s, which would not align with Mercedes, Renault or Honda's objectives.

As for prospects for 2015, Horner says that it will be "a season of change" with new faces in different cars, like Fernando Alonso in a McLaren Honda and Vettel in a Ferrari, which Horner thinks he will take time to adjust to,

"From a regulation point of view, nothing really will change. It's down to the teams to try and catch Mercedes now and we have a lot of work going on with Renault to try and reduce that gap. Those guys (Mercedes) aren't going to stand still either. We have an exciting new driver line up next year in Daniel Ricciardo and Dany Kvyat and that's going to be an exciting new dynamic and they are going to be pushing very hard. We're going to see Sebastian in red which is going to be a bit different and weird for the first few races. I think we're set for a fantastic season, Fernando Alonso in McLaren... again. I think it's going to be a season of change."

Perhaps most importantly, Adrian Newey has been in charge of design of the 2015 car,

"Adrian is taking a little bit of a step back, but he's still very much involved," says Horner. "He's overseen the design of the new car and will be coming to some of the races and he'll be at some of the pre-season tests as well. He is going to be splitting his time between Formula One and Red Bull Advanced Technologies. We recently announced a project with Ben Ainslie Racing, a British Americas Cup entry, which is primarily focused on simulation and mathematical modelling. It's great to still have Adrian as part of the Team and still advising and mentoring Dan Fallows, Rob Marshall, Pierre Wache and Paul Monaghan. We have such a strong Senior Technical Team."