Christian Horner thinks Daniel Ricciardo's solitary point was as good as Red Bull could have expected from its home grand prix in Austria.
Red Bull endured a frustrating homecoming at the Spielberg circuit which shares its name, where Renault's power deficit was clear to see against Mercedes and Ferrari engines. Daniil Kvyat could only finish 12th, but Ricciardo battled back from 14th on the grid and a five-second penalty to score a point.
"Our prediction this morning was one and a half points if everything was at a maximum!" Horner joked after the race. "So we pretty much achieved the optimum. I think Ricciardo actually drove a good race starting on the harder tyre, which is about half a second slower than the softer of the two.
"He hung in there, then had to incur the five-second frustration at the pit stop before the boys could change the tyres. Without that he would have beaten Perez today. All things considered, for where he had to start and the handicap he had I think he did a good job.
"With Kvyat again he had a rocket-ship launch at the start. There was a bit of a fuss, it looked like Ericsson jumped the start and then stopped. That then forced Perez to take evasive action and Dany unfortunately drove up the back of him.
"The damage of the front wing then went under the front wing and damaged the car quite badly, what we call the flippers, and he lost a lot of downforce as a result. Then you're in that horrible situation where you're going around waiting for the demise of others for him to get a point, so a frustrating race for him."
Ricciardo thinks morale at Red Bull will be raised by coming away with something from what he expects will be its toughest weekend this year.
"I look that we started at the back and got one point off probably our hardest circuit on the calendar, in terms of where we think the car performs, so coming to Silverstone and Budapest with no penalties we should be well inside the points and hopefully fight for a top five," the Australian said.
Asked if it was ironic Red Bull struggled so much at the Red Bull Ring, Ricciardo said: "It is unfortunate!"