Sebastian Vettel has admitted team-mate Daniel Ricciardo is doing a better job than he is this season, regardless of reliability troubles.
Whilst Vettel sits sixth in the standings with 70 points, Ricciardo is third with 98, a 28 point advantage which would have been 46 had he not been excluded from second place in Australia.
The German has suffered from “bad luck” with more than half of the reliability troubles happening on his side of the garage, but despite this, Vettel concedes that Ricciardo is “doing a better job”.
“He makes fewer mistakes than I do and so I have to pay him the necessary respect,” he added.
Championship leader Nico Rosberg sympathised with his fellow German ahead of their home race and said it must be difficult to go from such dominance to the midfield in the space of a year.
Vettel though wouldn’t trade his RB10 for the dominant W05 though.
“I’d rather be in my car,” he told Bunte. “The fact that things are not going so well is clear, but I think that is just for the moment.
“Red Bull is very special to me, not only because of the past years in F1, but also because of the support they gave in the very early years in my career.”