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Verstappen remains "cautious" about Red Bull's 2018 title hopes
Max Verstappen says he still remains "cautious" about Red Bull’s hopes of mounting a Formula 1 championship assault next year, despite its recent strong form.
Jonathan Noble Erwin Jaeggi
Edited: Nov 6, 2017, 11:38 AM
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The Milton Keynes-based outfit has won two of the last four races, and has outscored Ferrari since the summer break on the back of a big improvement in its chassis performance.
But although that form has set up the prospect of Red Bull being able to launch a full title bid next year, Verstappen insists he is not getting carried away just yet..
"I'm still a little bit cautious, but it is going in the right way anyway,” said the Dutchman after his victory in the Mexican Grand Prix.
“You never know what they [the other teams] are going to come up with. I just want to enjoy this end of the season and then we’ll see what happens next year."
The biggest uncertainty for Verstappen and Red Bull will be the amount of progress that Renault can make over the winter, on the heels of a sometimes frustrating 2017 campaign.
The French car manufacturer itself is bullish about what is coming for next year, but Verstappen says that there is little point getting carried away with his hopes until 2018 cars take to the track.
"That we will see next year,” he said when asked about Renault’s potential for improvement. “I find it difficult to answer this question now."
Driver confidence
One thing that Red Bull looks set to be able to count on, though, is a fired-up Verstappen himself, his spirits lifted by his wins in Malaysia and Mexico.
The Dutchman’s father Jos says that his son has grown in self-belief in recent weeks, which was important after the frustrations of reliability problems earlier in the campaign.
“I have this feeling that he is getting more and more confident,” the former grand prix driver told Motorsport.com. “He’s even able to play around a bit. This is just great. This is what we want to see.
“This is also the reason why we signed a new contract. How they [Red Bull] have managed to turn things around this year, going from - not a bad car because it was not a bad car, of course - but from not a really good car to what they have now, that’s just superb.”
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