- Red Bull
Red Bull still avoiding team orders
Christian Horner says Red Bull will still let its drivers race despite Daniel Ricciardo being an outside bet for the world championship.
Three wins for Ricciardo this year have given him an outside chance of the championship, currently standing 60 points behind Lewis Hamilton in the knowledge 50 are available at the Abu Dhabi finale. But in Singapore Sebastian Vettel finished second ahead of Ricciardo, keeping the world champion mathematically in contention and Horner says no team orders will exist while this remains the case.
"Both have mathematically got a chance," Horner said. "It's a long shot and it's down to them racing each other on the track. It would be wrong to interfere with that in the situation we're in and let them race as we saw. Daniel is totally comfortable and happy with that. If there was a realistic chance of Daniel winning and Sebastian was mathematically out of the championship then we'd do the best we can for the team but the situation we're in at the moment it's a long shot."
Mercedes has been dominant but has suffered a spate of reliability issues - such as Rosberg's retirement in Singapore - but Horner does not think Red Bull cannot rely on that continuing.
"They have an enormous advantage at this point. We'll take it one race at a time. There's both of them still just in it and both have taken a chunk of points today out of Nico. Daniel, OK he's conceded three points to Seb but is that going to make the difference? Impossible to say with a crystal ball at this stage but at the moment it doesn't make sense to interfere with team orders.
"Due to their shocking reliability hopefully we can keep ourselves in the championship, but it levels itself out over a year. We're going to have to take an engine with Sebastian at some stage. They're probably not."
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