Having been involved in Formula 1 for so long, Christian Horner is able to face most situations with his usual wry smile and unwavering tone of voice.
As his Red Bull team gears up for one of the most important race weekends of the year, he knows just how important the Austrian Grand Prix will be to their season. It is their home race, with all the extra support – and pressure – that comes with such an occasion. Not to mention it also hosts the second of three Sprint races this year.
Not that Horner seemed in any way perturbed as he sat down to chat about it all with Mirror Sport . "It's good to be back in Austria, where there's a massive support for the team," he said with a smile. "And particularly Max [Verstappen] as well, as there are a lot of Dutch here. It's great to be racing back in Austria in front of a full crowd."
Our conversation takes place less than an hour after the end of the first of just two practice sessions of the weekend. It was disturbed by two red flags, meaning the already limited running time for the teams at Spielberg was cut even further. It was a "sensible" session, says the Red Bull chief, as he assesses what the weekend holds.
Asked if the expectation of a home Grand Prix outweighs the positives, he replied: "There's always pressure, and the pressure is just what you put on yourself. This is our home race in front of what will be a packed crowd this weekend, and a lot of sponsors and shareholders. It's a big weekend, and the Sprint race only adds to it.
"Everything gets condensed, but you've got to do the best you can. We had a sensible first session, so it's about using that data and applying it to qualifying and of course the race on Sunday. There's an awful lot of number crunching and head scratching going on at the moment and the conditions could well be different, but let's see.
"Hopefully it's a dry weekend – I don't think we need the rain to create any more excitement this weekend, the track can do that by itself. There are a lot of points to win or lose here, and we saw that at Imola. It put Max back into contention and that can happen both ways, so we really need to come out of this weekend with a strong result."
Red Bull are sitting pretty at the top of the constructors' championship, while the drivers standings also make for pretty fun reading from their perspective. Max Verstappen has a healthy lead in his quest for back-to-back titles, while his nearest challenger is team-mate Sergio Perez.
The Dutchman may have snatched the title last year, but Mercedes kept their grip on the constructors' table. Ending the Silver Arrows' domination in that regard is very much at the top of Horner's agenda as he looks ahead to the rest of the campaign.
He said: "It's been an unbelievable start, especially after the end of last year when we put so much into winning that championship that suddenly we didn't expect to be able to produce a competitive car with the biggest regulation change in the last 40 years – to be challenging for race wins from the first race.
"But that's what we've managed to do, so to be at the halfway stage of the championship with the results we've had, it's testimony to the hard work from the whole team. We're always trying to achieve the double, which would be beyond our wildest dreams if we were able to pull it off. That's what we're shooting for."
But even though things are looking rosy right now, the 48-year-old is far from prepared to make any bold predictions. With 12 more rounds of the championship still to go, he says Ferrari are still more than capable of spoiling the party – and he knows better than to forget about Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes as well.
"There's such a long way to go and we've seen such big swings in points. Ferrari have a great car and competitive drivers, and Mercedes... I wouldn't discount them from the championship just yet, so there's a long, long way to go and an awful lot of racing, and a lot of points available.
"We are only at the halfway point so anything is possible. We don't rule out or underestimate any of our opponents. They've won the constructors' championship for the last eight consecutive seasons, so we'd be fairly foolhardy to underestimate them."
Car performance is key to success in F1, but arguably even more vital is reliability. You can have the most powerful engine and the most perfectly-designed car on the grid, but if it breaks down in every other race, then you can kiss your title ambitions goodbye.
Red Bull were hit by problems in the early races, causing a double DNF in Bahrain and forcing Verstappen to stop at the Australian Grand Prix. But since then it is Ferrari who have experienced that pain, with power unit issues in recent races doing serious damage to the title hopes of Charles Leclerc.
While Horner hopes his team has already had its fair share of bad luck, he is wary that more issues can rear their ugly heads at any time. "It's always a concern when pushing the boundaries of these cars," he admits. "It tends to even itself out over the course of a season. We had some back luck early on, and Ferrari likewise in more recent races. It always tends to even itself out.
Perez was the last Red Bull driver to fail to finish a race when he was forced out of the Canadian Grand Prix. Red Bull later diagnosed the problem as a gearbox issue – one that Horner believes will cause no further worries going forward. "You can never say never, but hopefully we have understood the issue," he said with as much confidence as is possible when speaking of such unpredictable elements.
The conversation turns to individual drivers, with the Mexican the first to be discussed. Now in his second season with the team, the 32-year-old is enjoying his best ever year in F1 so far winning in Monaco, finishing second on five other occasions and proving that he is capable of regularly scoring the valuable points his team needs to dethrone Mercedes and see off the challenge of Ferrari.
And Horner was only too happy to heap praise upon the Mexican, who signed a new contract extension in the wake of that victory in the principality. He said: "He's having an amazing run. He's found his confidence in his second year with the team, and he's more at home in the environment. He's doing a great job and he's still very much in this championship."
Asked if Perez is the man Red Bull have been searching for who is capable of winning whenever Verstappen can't, Horner added: "I think he's demonstrated that. He had a phenomenal win at the Monaco Grand Prix, and has been qualifying right at the front of the field. He's second in the championship at the halfway stage, so he's very much done more than we expected."
As for Verstappen, leading the championship after winning seven of 10 races so far is a stellar achievement. What impresses his team principal more, though, is his development as both a driver and a man. He could easily have thrown in the towel after a stray piece of debris ruined his race at the British Grand Prix, but he knuckled down to still manage a handful of points for both himself and his team.
Horner said: "I think we would have been in great shape to win that race, but that's racing sometimes – things don't always go your way. It was a bit of bad luck for him to pick up that debris, but he's still racing incredibly well and he managed to salvage some points at the end of the day. He's continuing to grow and develop as a driver, and he continues to get more experience. He's still so young, it's inevitable that he is going to continue to develop."
