Red Bull’s “really encouraging” performance at the British Grand Prix꧒ leaves the team confident heading into the second half of the 2019 Formula 1 season, according to Christian Horner.

The Milton Keynes squad was not expecting to fare particularly well at Silverstone, a circuit renowned for its high power-sensitivity, but Max Verstappen was able 🎃to qualify within 0.183s of Valtteri Bottas’ poletime.

Verstappen battled F🦂errari’s Charles Leclerc for the fin⛦al podium spot and looked on course to challenge Bottas for second place until he was hit by Sebastian Vettel, dropping the Dutchman to fifth, while teammate Pierre Gasly scored his best result of the season in fourth.

“Itꦫ’s really encouraging to be this close to Mercedes around this type of ꧒track,” Horner said.

“We know it is power-sensitive, and to be able to follow thꦬe Ferraris as closely as we were able to through Maggots, Becketts and Copse, Max was able to take some serious momen🐓tum behind the Ferraris there and that’s usually the sign of a pretty decent car.

“I think we’ve definitely unlocked some potential from the car. The♕ car has behaved very well at Silverstone in high-speed and low-speed, we’ve looked competitive.

“And for Max to bಞe as close to the pole time as much as he was, even without the [engine] hesitations maybe would have got even clo⭕ser, and then in the race we didn’t see his true pace because he spent it stuck behind a Ferrari for 99 percent of it.

“We’ve got confidence going to Hockenheim following the perfꦇormance at Silverstone,” he added.

“This, after Monza, is one of the most power-sensitive circuits on the calendar, you are ♊flat out on the lap here for pretty much t𝓰he entirety of the lap. So that’s encouraging for us, and certainly for a track like Hockenheim which is less power-sensitive than here.

“Hungary is a track we have alw𒁏ays performed well at🐻. Hopefully we can have a strong car there.”

Horner expects further progress when Honda introduces its next engine upgrade – which is expected to come at either the Belgian or Italian Grand Prix - and insists the Japanese manufacturer has reduced much of the deficit to leading power unit rivals Ferrari and Mercedes already th♑is year.

“I think there is still time to find but they are doing a good job and they are definitely closing tဣhe gap,” Horner said.

“We’ve got a lot of racing to do before we get to that point. If we were to💞 introduce a new engine it would be around the Spa-Monza timing. Monza historically hಌas been a good place for us to introduce engine penalties.”