Red Bull team principal Christian Horner says it’s far too early to be talking about potential drivers for 2014, after persistent rumours that Kimi Raikkonen or potentially one of the Toro Rosso drivers could replace Mark Webber.
Recently Toro Rosso team principal Franz Tost admitted Daniel Ricciardo had the ‘upper-hand’ if Horner came knocking, but conceded he isn’t yet ready.
Horner supports promoting from within, as they did with Sebastian Vettel, but he says it’s far too early to discuss the matter.
“The whole purpose of Toro Rosso is to develop young drivers for us to look at as potential candidates for Red Bull Racing, that’s where Sebastian Vettel came from and that’s the purpose of the development of the Toro Rosso drivers,” he said.
“For us at the moment we’ve only done five races so to be talking about next years [drivers] is still very premature. We have a great insight into how these guys are developing and it’s great to see the progress they’re making.”
Meanwhile on the subject of Lotus driver Kimi Raikkonen, he praised the Finn, but once again brushed aside discussing the possibility of Raikkonen joining Red Bull.
“Kimi is doing a super job, he’s driving extremely well at the moment, but you know at the moment our focus is on our current drivers and Kimi is a rival driver so our focus is trying to beat him.
“As I say, we’ve only done five races it’s still very early in the year and at the relevant time, later in the summer, we’ll sit down and discuss drivers.”
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