Kvyat: Podium was a message to Red Bull

Daniil Kvyat believes his podium finish at the Chinese Grand Prix sent a message to Red Bull about his capabilities.

The emergence of Max Verstappen at Toro Rosso has already led to Kvyat receiving questions about his future at Red Bull, with the 18-year-old tipped to move up in 2017. Following his impressive podium in China, Kvyat told team principal Christian Horner over team radio he hopes there will be many more to come in the future with the team, and the Russian believes the result itself was enough of a message to Red Bull.

“Obviously I think it’s a general message," Kvyat told reporters at the Sanki Sliding Centre on Wednesday. "If you keep doing these kind of things in Formula 1 you are in a safe place regardless of other outside factors.

"I see my future of course with Red Bull and I would of course like to win as much as possible together, that’s my dream. But I think this kind of feeling should be mutual and I hope it will be confirmed to be mutual soon.

"Of course I want to bring as many points possible to the team and show even at these hard times I’m doing my best. Last year was a very tough year for the team but I brought the most points to the team and I think that should all be recognised. I hope in the future it will and I already feel that it is being recognised.”

And Kvyat acknowledges how crucial it was for him to bounce back quickly having struggled during qualifying in Bahrain a fortnight earlier.

"It was very important. Bahrain was actually a very good weekend apart from the most important session, qualifying. We still don’t know exactly … There was something to do with the tyres there, the car just felt like it was nowhere that session.

"We learned from it and in China we proved that we learned it. It was very important to be in quite an important pace in China [on] Saturday, Sunday, both felt quite comfortable. I think more steps to come in the future, I know we can improve and I know we will because we are very competitive people. On our side of the garage we want to always be the best."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.