Planet-F1

Brawn ready for fight with Red Bull

Wednesday 1st July 2009

Brawn GP are starting to cast a worrying glance over their shoulder as Red Bull continue to improve.

The gap between Sebastian Vettel and Championship pacesetter Jenson Button is down to 25 points after the German won at Silverstone while 30.5 points separate Brawn and Red Bull in the Constructors' Championship.

Brawn team principal Ross Brawn says the team are eager to get back to winning ways at Nurburgring, where they will introduce new "bits" to their car.

"Red Bull have been pretty close all year, so I think we have got to find some performance because they made a good step at Silverstone," the Brit said.

"With the confusion over the tyres, we didn't run some new pieces we had because Friday [at Silverstone] was very difficult with the tyre temperature. We couldn't determine how the new bits were working, so we decided to avoid confusion and went back to what we had in Turkey.

"So we've got those bits and we have some new improvements for the Nurburgring."

Brawn attributed their struggles at the British Grand Prix to the cooler conditions, which affected their tyres.

"It has always been a strong car aerodynamically and at Silverstone in the slow medium speed stuff, we didn't take the return we normally could because the tyres were cold," Brawn said. "So when we got to the complex there wasn't enough temperature in the tyres for our normal advantages to come through in that area.

"But we probably need to see a bit more in normal conditions to really judge it - a race where we are comfortable we are performing how we should be.

"With all due respect we were racing Williams and Ferrari at Silverstone, and we don't normally do that. I don't think they made a step, I think we struggled a bit."