After ending a difficu💛lt 2022 campaign with victory at the penultimate round of the season in Brazil, Mercedes opted to stick with their controversial🧜 ‘zeropod’ concept for 2023. 

However, following a disappointing start to the ne🌳w season, Toto Wolff declared Mercedes would abandon their unique solution in favour of a more conventional design, which w🤡as introduced at the Monaco Grand Prix. 

Asked if Red Bull had been buoyed by Mercedes’ announcement after the opening race of 2023, team principal Horner told Autosport: “Well, Toto tends to be a lit💜tle dramatic anyway.&nbꦛsp;

“I think what surprised us was that Ferrari 🍬had a very good car last year. And the natural evolution of that we expected it to be a very tight contend꧑er this year.

“We were very surprised to see Mercedes sticking with the ไconcepts that had clearly failed the previous year🦹.

“If you looked aro🔯und the cars in pre-season, the cars that were closest in concept to us were tꦿhe Aston Martin and McLaren.”

Despite their strong start to the ca𓆏mpaign, Horner insisted nobody within Red Bull got carried away. 

“Certainly, comin𓆉g out of Bahrain, we felt like, ‘we’ve got a really good package here’,” he explained. “But we didn’t know whether it was circuit-specific – temperature, ♒conditions, asphalt.

“So, it’s only when you’ve had a sample of two or three and you’ve gone to a couple 🐬of circuits that have been more troublesome, certainly for us the previous year, like Melbourne for example, that sudde𒅌nly you’re thinking, ‘ok, no, this is really together’. 

“ꦑAnd so yeah, it takes a sample of a few races to get a clear overview. Nobody was coming out of Bahrain getting too carried away."