'Everything Is Open' For Second Seat In Red Bull From 2025 Says Horner

Thursday, 21 December 2023 at 09:00

The team principal of the 2023 World Championship winning team, Christian Horner, discussed the second seat in Red Bull's driver options from 2025 onwards.

One seat in Red Bull is going to be empty at the end of the 2025 season, and the team finds itself in a situation where everybody would like to drive for Red Bull.

Red Bull has won the last three driver Championship titles and has had such a dominant car in 2023, they won 21 out of 22 races in the season.

Perhaps the only thing that scares drivers from Red Bull is being directly compared to Max Verstappen, who outperformed almost all of his recent teammates by quite a large margin.

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Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner addressed the topic of the second seat in Red Bull recently when he told Sky Sports F1 the lineup for 2025 is still open:

"As a team, you want to field the most competitive pairing that you can have, and you want the right dynamic in the team."

Red Bull did not seem to have such a competitive pairing in 2023, as Sergio Perez lost to Verstappen by 290 points in the Championship.

There are some other teams on the grid with much more closely matched drivers like Mercedes, Ferrari, or Alpine. On the other hand, the team principal pointed towards Mexican's improvement over the years.

"Max and Checo have been a tremendously successful pairing. Checo, in his three years with us, has finished fourth, third and second so he’s on a good trajectory."

Daniel Ricciardo is also an option for Red Bull, and rumors that surfaced a few weeks ago suggested he might have a clause in his contract allowing him to replace Perez in Red Bull in case the Mexican driver doesn't perform well at the start of the season.

"Daniel is well known to us – it's great to have him back in the Red Bull fold – and of course everything is open for 2025 onwards. For us, to have options internally and also externally is no bad place to be."