Ricciardo going 'to that next level' alongside Verstappen

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Daniel Ricciardo believes he and team-mate Max Verstappen are "pushing each other to that next level" in their fight at Red Bull.

Verstappen was promoted from Toro Rosso ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix and duly won the race in Barcelona. Consecutive second places in Austria and Great Britain have seen Verstappen outscore Ricciardo over their time as team-mates so far - closing the gap in the standings to just ten points - but with the Australian getting the better of the battle in qualifying at the Hungaroring he believes it is helping both their performances.

"Always you want to beat your team-mate," Ricciardo said. "That’s always, in a way, your first target. Everyone wants to win but if you can’t win you want to try to win the team battle, as it’s called. So yeah, I want to have a good race. I really feel we can fight for more than just a podium – but let’s see.

"I’ve obviously put myself in a good position I think from the start of the weekend, things have been working well. Obviously Max has done very well and he’s got some great results since he’s been here and I really believe we’re pushing each other to that next level and I think it’s showing in the team’s results.

"But also on myself I want to make sure I’m doing everything I can. So I focus on me first, and then try to understand a little bit of what’s happening around me."

From Verstappen's point of view, he is confident he can beat Ricciardo in today's Hungarian Grand Prix.

"I think we can have a good result," Verstappen said. "I can definitely move up to third and then from there hopefully the Mercedes cars have a little bit of degradation issues, you never know. It will be exciting.”

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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.