Horner: Red Bull must qualify better

Red Bull boss Christian Horner says his team has to improve its qualifying performance in order to make sure that Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber remain in the fight for the 2012 F1 title. Having dominated qualifying last year, the team has only managed to qualify on the front two rows once this season, when Webber took fourth on the grid at Sepang. In China at the weekend, defending champion Vettel failed to even make it through to Q3 and was forced to start down in eleventh place. Red Bull has however performed better on race day, Webber and Vettel helping the team to second in the constructors' championship behind McLaren with three races gone. With that in mind, Horner admitted that the aim now is to improve Saturday performance to put the two drivers in a better position for race day. "Our strategy in the first three races has been strong," he told Sporting Life. "But where we've been weak on a Saturday we've performed quite well on a Sunday. We just need to sort out qualifying now. "We know we've good race pace, so if we can just get qualifying sorted then we can make a significant step forward." More performance could be found from a DRS system similar to that pioneered by Mercedes this season, but Horner admitted that for Red Bull to find its own solution wouldn't be easy. "I think there's been a lot said and a lot of fuss about it," he said "They have optimised and capitalised on it, so inevitably now we'll all pursue our own solutions. "First of all, like any component, it has to earn a place on the car as a package. It's not a given that on everybody's car it's bolt-on lap time."