Horner: Verstappen ready for a title challenge in 2019

Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner has said that his driver Max Verstappen is ready to challenge for the title next season, as the Dutchman has been in a rich vein of form for months now.

Verstappen started the 2018-season very poorly, as he was making way too many mistakes on a weekly basis. Whether it was a harmless spin like in Australia or a car-destroying error like in FP3 in Monaco, it was simply not good enough from the obviously talented Verstappen.

After that Monaco-accident, though, some switch seemed to have flipped in the Dutchman's head. That accident basically cost him a potential pole position and win, with teammate Daniel Ricciardo getting both of those in the end, and he couldn't stand that.

He came back after that with devastating consistency, beating Ricciardo more than ten times in a row in qualifying and winning two races without ever crashing again.

Horner, therefore, thinks that the 21-year-old is ready to challenge for the title if he gets a car that is capable of doing so.

 “You’ve seen this weekend [in Mexico] if we’ve had an engine that is anywhere near the ballpark of our opponents, then we’ve got a strong enough team and strong enough driver package to take the fight to them [Mercedes and Ferrari]," Horner was quoted by F1Today.

“We’re obviously hopeful that the Honda [engine], with the progress they’re making, will put us into a situation where we’re more regularly able to compete. We are here with the optimum downforce on the car, the optimum setting on the car. 

“[Max] went through a rough patch at the beginning of the year. But really, since Montreal, he’s been doing some incredible races and I think with experience that was really the only missing piece. All drivers make mistakes, you see that up and down the paddock. It’s what you learn from them.”

"He has an awful load of capacity in the car. I think he’s got a very good racing brain as well. So he’s wanting to understand what’s going on in the rest of the race to match his pace accordingly.”