Red Bull still looking at all options for Toro Rosso seats

Red Bull say they are looking at all available options to fill the vacant Toro Rosso seats for next season. Pierre Gasly will make the move from Toro Rosso to Red Bull to line-up alongside Max Verstappen and Brendon Hartley looks unlikely to be keeping his seat in 2019 at the team.

Recent rumours suggest that Daniil Kvyat will be making his return to F1 after being unceremoniously dumped by Red Bull back in 2017. The Russian looks set to rejoin the team he began at however as to who his teammate will be remains very much undecided.

Red Bull junior Dan Ticktum appears to be favourite, with the team willing to wait until February to decide who will drive for Toro Rosso. Ticktum would need to win the European F3 series as well as the Asian F3 winter series in order to accumulate enough superlicence points to graduate into F1.

“We are currently planning to announce one driver in Sochi. It’s important to get one driver contract done quickly,” said Red Bull motorsport advisor Dr Helmut Marko.

“There is not such a hurry to fill the other cockpit. We can even wait until winter testing.”

Another option would be to put recently released Pascal Wehrlein in the seat. The German recently agreed to part way with Mercedes having been a part of their driver development programme, but decided to leave the stable in order to secure a future in F1 elsewhere.