F1: Daniel Ricciardo ‘ran from a fight’ with Max Verstappen at Red Bull

Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner has accused former driver Daniel Ricciardo of “running away from a fight” with former team-mate Max Verstappen.

Ricciardo, who is Australian, left Red Bull at the end of last season. He will drive for Renault in the 2019 Formula 1 campaign.

Interviewed in the upcoming Netflix documentary Formula 1: Drive to Survive, Horner was asked about Ricciardo’s departure and the rivalry with emerging star Verstappen.

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Quoted by the Daily Mail, the Red Bull team principal said: “Is he [Ricciardo] making the right career choice? My assumption is that he is running from a fight [with Max Verstappen].”

Bottas yet to achieve his target in F1

He may be part of F1’s dominant Mercedes team but Valtteri Bottas admits his 2018 campaign was disappointing and that he has yet to reach his targets in the sport.

Last season Mercedes won the constructors’ championship while Bottas’s team-mate Lewis Hamilton raced to the drivers’ title. But Finnish star Bottas finished fifth in the standings after failing to win a grand prix in 2018.

Interviewed by F1.com, the 29-year-old said it was a disappointing season and that he was almost angry with himself that in his six years in Formula 1 he hadn’t achieved his target.

“I do have time, but I’m starting to realise that you definitely have only one career and I don’t want to be in this situation again.”

Winning was a priority, he said. “My target for the year is to win as much as I can – even though I didn’t win a race last year – and only one target for the whole season is the world championship for me personally, and for us as a team.

“I still feel that I haven’t achieved anything in Formula 1 so for myself I still have a lot to achieve. I do want to meet my targets… [and] I’m willing to do, basically, whatever it takes to achieve those, and [am]... mentally prepared to go all in for the year.”