Red Bull boss Christian Horner has insisted his team didn’t set a target of wins to achieve in 2019, despite Helmut Marko’s suggestion they had.

Marko made the claim that Red Bull wanted to win more races than they did last year – this would mean claiming pole position on five occasions – after an encouraging pre-season testing programme.

However, Horner has declared setting specific targets would be a 'waste of time' and instead just wants to see improvement in their first year partnered with Honda.

Horner said: "Helmut obviously likes to take an optimistic outlook and we are only three races in, from a team perspective we have never set any targets in terms of race victories. Our goal is about closing that gap,” per Motorsport.

“I think doing that is a waste of time, my view has always been you look at what is the quickest car and you look at what is the quickest way we can get there, and that varies from race to race.

“It was Ferrari in Bahrain and it was Mercedes in China, and obviously everyone is working as hard as they can to close that gap. To say it is by this race or this race, history dictates it is a fallacy.”

One thing Red Bull can be encouraged by so far this season is Max Verstappen, who sits third in the driver’s championship and ahead of both Ferrari drivers Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc.

“I think he has been very mature about it,” said Horner about Verstappen. “He has driven three strong grands prix so far this year and was obviously unlucky not to be on the podium in Bahrain.

“We see he had a go at Sebastian [Vettel] in China after the pit stop and drive a very mature race to bring it home fourth. It is about points accumulation at this stage.

“It is still not that big a gap to the guys ahead, and he is still ahead of both Ferrari drivers in the championship at the moment. There is still a long, long way to go, so it's important you don't give away too much ground at this stage of the year.”

Red Bull are still some way away from the likes of Mercedes, but Horner clearly remains encouraged by the progress his team are making.