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Red Bull team principal Christian Horner is adamant that Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen will be racing for Red Bull in 2018. Both men have been linked with a move away to Ferrari to replace Kimi Raikkonen for next year.
Red Bull were favourites heading into 2017 to challenge Mercedes, as the new aerodynamic rules were expected to aid them and their chief technical officer, Adrian Newey who excels in major aerodynamic overhauls.
However, the team from Milton Keyes has so far struggled, and sit far behind Mercedes and Ferrari who are battling for this year's championship. They've claimed two podiums in the first five races, much less than what they were expecting.
Horner fully believes both drivers will stick with Red Bull: "No, none at all," he said when asked if there are any performance-related clauses in the contracts. "They are both straightforward clean contracts. I've got no doubt that both Max and Daniel will be driving an RB14 next year."
Red Bull head into qualifying day at Monaco in high spirits after showing some pace in the first two practice sessions. Ricciardo and Verstappen were speaking yesterday about possibly sneaking a car onto the front row. Horner thinks that the team is on for one of their stronger weekends of the year.
"Daniel has always excelled at this circuit, he’s very confident. He’s won support races here, he’s qualified on pole here, he’s led a lot of laps here. He put in an outstanding performance in 2014, same again in ’16. But Max is getting there as well. He had a bit of a scruffy day yesterday afternoon, with just traffic and red flags, but he’s in pretty decent shape.
"We don’t take anything for granted and we know we have ground to make up. But the whole team is massively motivated to close that gap down and I think has actually been doing a very good job over the early races."
Fergal Walsh
Grand Prix of Belgium
C. Sainz jr
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Never expected them to be anywhere else