Red Bull's Christian Horner was happy with Sebastian Vettel's third place in Australia

Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner insisted that Sebastian Vettel's third place in the Australian Grand Prix was actually a "very, very good result" given the tyre problems he experienced.

Horner also explained that traffic did not help Vettel's cause as it puts further stress on the tyres. A case in point was his inability to pass Force India driver Adrian Sutil, who led the race after starting 11th on the prime tyre and running a long opening stint. "Obviously when you're running around behind a car, you're using the tyre even harder. But then Sutil started to pull away on tyres that were significantly older than Sebastian's," he said. "That's when we knew we were just out of the window with the tyre degradation today." The fact that Vettel was chased by the Ferraris during the early stages appeared at first to be down to a poor start by team-mate Mark Webber from second on the grid. However, Horner blamed the Australian's difficult race - he eventually finished sixth - on a faulty ECU which caused assorted problems, not least a loss of KERS. "Mark's problems were hugely frustrating because it was an ECU issue that's obviously supplied by a third party. We lost all telemetry on the formation lap, so you can't do the preparation you need to for the start," Horner said. "That ECU issue shut the KERS down as well. So by the time we'd reset the system, he'd lost the start and lost early ground." The ECU is supplied to the entire grid by McLaren. However, a new version introduced this season has proved problematic. "It's something they need to get on top of because there's been a lot of issues in early-season testing," Horner added. "Today had nothing to do with Mark. You need to go and ask McLaren why the ECU didn't work. That totally messed up his preparation."