Red Bull is “far ahead” and it will be very difficult for rivals including Mercedes to catch up.

That is the claim of Nico Rosberg, who after a promising winter campaign for Mercedes struggled for pace in the new silver W02 in Australia.

“We have to say that Sebastian (Vettel) and Red Bull are far ahead of everyone,” he told Sport Bild.

“In the chasing field, we want to play a serious role and improve on our fourth place of last year,” added Rosberg.

The German marque’s motor sport director Norbert Haug also admitted that catching up with Red Bull “will be difficult”.

Also doubting Mercedes’ ability to catch up by deploying aggressive car development is Helmut Marko, Red Bull’s motor racing consultant.

“Very few teams can take a car and make it much more competitive — besides us, only Ferrari and McLaren (can),” the Austrian told Sportwoche.

The first task for Mercedes will be to sort out the obvious problems seen in Melbourne, such as the malfunctioning KERS system.

“It was strange that it worked for McLaren but not for us,” said Haug.

Red Bull exhaust copycats ‘a pain’ admits Newey

Adrian Newey admits it is flattering but also “a pain” that the latest trend in F1 is to copy the exhaust layout on Red Bull’s new RB7 car.

Sebastian Vettel easily won the 2011 opener from pole in Melbourne last weekend, but in second place was McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton, after the British team ditched its own complex ‘octopus’ exhaust system.

The RB7′s designer Newey told UK newspaper Express that “some teams have copied” his exhaust; surely also a reference to Ferrari, Sauber and Williams.

But the most notable imitator has been McLaren, who according to Newey have “made a huge leap forward” after a dire winter.

“We think it (the exhaust) works for us,” he told Reuters as he received an award in London. “It seems it also works for McLaren.

“It’s a form of flattery but it’s a bit of a pain if they then beat you with it,” added the Briton.

To ensure Red Bull’s superiority is not challenged soon, Newey said the team is working hard to race its KERS system next weekend in Malaysia.

“We will have it from now on,” he told Express, referring to the team’s decision to take it off the cars in Melbourne due to a reliability problem.

“It was actually a relatively trivial problem but KERS is a complicated system, we have been trying to develop the element of it that has been giving us a bit of trouble ourselves and we’re not experts in that field,” explained Newey.

Source: http://uk.autoblog.com/2011/03/31/rivals-red-bull-hard-to-catch/