Christian Horner said McLaren's "truly impressive" pace at the Austrian Grand Prix, something he likened to two cars making love, is a bar no other team will be able to match this year.
McLaren drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri raced clear of the rest in Austria and engaged in a thrilling fight for victory. Norris spent the first 20 laps with Piastri in his rear view mirrors as they vied for the lead.
Red Bull boss Horner said it showed how far ahead the papaya cars are this year.
"What's truly impressive, and for me I can't see any other team being able to do it, is when you look at how close Oscar is able to run behind Lando with a car fat on fuel at the beginning of the race," Horner said.
"He's basically making love to his exhaust pipe for lap after lap after lap, and the tyres are not dying. I mean, that to me is, you know, that is their advantage. They've managed to create a car that really protects its tyres very well and obviously has a good balance. I can't see any other car that would be able to follow that closely and not grain the front tyres or the rear tyres. I don't really understand."
Although Red Bull are a long way off in the constructors' championship, Max Verstappen had at one stage seemed like a distant outsider in the drivers'.
It was a difficult afternoon for Red Bull at its home race. Verstappen was punted out of the contest by Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli on lap one, while Yuki Tsunoda's struggles in the other car continued -- the Japanese driver was 16th, last of the classified cars.
"Well, that was a home race to forget," he added. "We got unlucky with the yellow flag [for Verstappen in qualifying], that then puts us in a position where you're in the crash zone, and Kimi just lost it in spectacular fashion up at Turn 3. Max was basically through the corner and getting back on the power, and just got wiped out, so, an unfortunate mistake by Kimi, he's apologised to Max, but, you know, for us it killed our afternoon."
Ferrari's Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton took third and fourth, with George Russell a distant fifth for Mercedes, but Horner thinks Verstappen would have been in the fight for the last spot on the podium had he stayed in the race.
"I think we'd have had the pace to race the Ferrari's hard today. George [Russell, in fifth] had no pace at all. When you're out in turn three there's not much you can do about it. We just need to see what damage there is, hopefully It's not too bad in terms of part quantities and so on for Silverstone.
"McLaren, you can see how they are racing each other, they've got a cushion to the rest of the field. For us, we just focus one race at a time. So we don't even think about championships."