Red Bull's Max Verstappen reckons finishing third in the championship standings, essentially best of the rest behind the Mercedes duo if things continue as they are, is a real possibility, despite joining the team four races into the season.
Verstappen had scored just 13 points with Toro Rosso before he was promoted to the sister team in place of Daniil Kvyat. In the following six races he has gone on to finish on the podium three times, including a race win, to add 77 points to his tally.
That puts him just eight shy of Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel, ten shy of team-mate Daniel Ricciardo and 16 behind third-placed Kimi Raikkonen – all of which he has outscored since stepping up to Red Bull.
When asked if third was the aim, he replied: "Yeah, we are pretty close but we will see where we end up at the end of the season. We’ll be third or sixth – in between that. Hopefully."
Related: Click here to check out the current championship standings
Verstappen said he is taking the season race-by-race and isn't counting his points until the final race of the season.
"You try to do the best possible job every race and then we’ll see after Abu Dhabi where we are," he added.
The 18-year-old could move up to third with a good result this weekend and some bad luck for his rivals and reckons he has the car to deliver a strong haul of points on Sunday.
"I think here as well the car can be very strong and I’m definitely looking forward to the weekend, because so far the car has been very strong, even on tracks where we didn’t expect it to be that strong," he explained.
"We just have to wait and see. It’s all about the setup now, how we can improve during the sessions. Hopefully we can be pretty close [to the front]."
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