Christian Horner on Red Bull's success and hints at next step
Christian Horner has not ruled out the possibility of replacing Sergio Perez with Yuki Tsunoda as Max Verstappen’s teammate at Red Bull. Daniel Ricciardo seemed to be in pole position should the seat become available but according to reports, the Red Bull boss is keeping the Japanese driver on his radar.
The 23-year-old is currently 16th in the Driver Standings with eight points, more than the likes of Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu and Haas’ Kevin Magnussen. In September he signed a one-year extension at AlphaTauri, as did his teammate Ricciardo. But with Perez currently under pressure and his contract set to expire in 2024, Horner added Tsunoda, a Red Bull junior driver, to his list of options for Red Bull’s second seat.
“Yuki is a very quick driver, and we’ve seen him evolve over the last three years. He now goes into his fourth season [2024] as a junior driver,” Horner said, as quoted by Last Word on Sports. “What you have to remember is that Red Bull Racing’s only interest in AlphaTauri is as a potential springboard into a Red Bull seat.” Shutting down the theory Tsunoda became part of the Red Bull program because of his nationality, Horner said: “Yuki is in Formula 1 because of his talent, not because of his nationality.
“Now, whether he ultimately proves to be good enough to step up to the Red Bull Racing team … He will have to earn that opportunity based on what he does on track.” In July, Horner expressed his excitement about Riccardo returning to Red Bull, claiming he was only on loan to AlphaTauri and would come back to Red Bull once the 2023 season had finished.
But now Ricciardo has signed a new deal with AlphaTauri, which Horner claimed he agreed to with an opportunity for a Red Bull seat in 2025 in the back of his mind. Deciding who Verstappen’s teammate will be comes with great difficulty given the level he is operating at.
The 26-year-old has won his third consecutive world title and so far he has failed to win just three races in what has been a dominant F1 campaign. Horner described the challenge ahead for whoever lines up against Verstappen, and he is continuing to keep an eye on the talented F1 field.
“There’s many drivers that you keep an eye on as well,” he began. “There’s a generation of drivers out there at the moment that have got a huge amount of talent. Now, being Max’s team-mate is never going to be easy and some drivers may be up for that challenge, some may not be.
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“But, of course, as well as the drivers we have in-house we keep an eye on all the driver market. As you can imagine, there’s quite a bit of interest from certain sectors about driving a Red Bull car.” Horner added: “Max is operating at such a level that his confidence, his commitment, his talent is absolute at the moment and it’s difficult to envisage somebody beating him in the same equipment.
“But there’s some great talent out there and of course what we want is the best two drivers we can possibly field. So ideally that will come from within the talent pool that we have, and if we don’t believe there’s that capability we will look outside of that as to who’s available.”
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