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Christian Horner says it would be "foolish" not to consider signing George Russell when his Mercedes contract expires next year, while hinting the Singapore Grand Prix could really be Daniel Ricciardo's final race in Formula 1.
Ricciardo headed into the Singapore weekend with an imminent Red Bull decision on his future being made in the days following the Singapore GP.
His RB seat is under major threat from Liam Lawson who has so far spent 2024 on the sidelines after his starring stand-in cameos last year.
That swap could happen in 2025 or as early as the next 2024 round in Austin, which is split from Singapore by a three-week gap.
Speaking before a crunch qualifying session in which Ricciardo was dumped out in Q1, Red Bull team boss Horner didn't say much to give Ricciardo confidence he'd remain in his RB cockpit for much longer.
"I'm not going to go into the ins and outs of driver contracts," Horner said when asked by Sky Sports F1 whether Red Bull had a contractual obligation to give Lawson a seat before the end of the year.
"There's privacy between the company and individuals.
"Liam, the job he did for us last year in the VCARB car was very impressive.
"Now, we took experience over that because Daniel was our banker if Sergio [Perez] was to drop the ball.
"Daniel has had a reasonable season but it hasn't been a stellar year.
"The question is how good is Liam and sometimes difficult decisions have to be made in order to get those answers.
"We'll sit down with all of those options available to us during this next three-week gap."
Horner said it wasn't "to the detriment" of Daniel that he's in this position and said "we've got a lot of data and knowledge of where Daniel is" when asked if Singapore could change things.
"It's a much bigger picture within the whole driver merry-go-round of what does the future look like?" Horner said.
How Russell feeds into bigger picture
Ex-F1 driver Martin Brundle told Horner he was "confused" by the Red Bull driver situation, queried whether Red Bull should have retained drivers who ended up elsewhere on the grid, and put it to Horner that RB has one of the weaker driver pairings on the current grid.
"It's a very good question, we've given a great opportunity to so many youngsters over the period of time [but] the Red Bull system does demand results and demand performance," Horner said.
"Max is delivering, Checo has been underdelivering this year, last year he did a good job or a good enough to finish second in the championship and be constructors' champion.
"We're having to look further down the road. We've got Liam Lawson on the bench. We're not quite sure...looking at the likes of [Franco] Colapinto, [Ollie] Bearman and [Kimi] Antonelli. Is he at that level? Only time will tell.
"We've got Isack Hadjar in Formula 2 who until recently was leading that championship. We've got a very exciting young talent that I'm particularly excited about in Formula 3, Arvid Lindblad.
"We've got depth in our junior programme, but we just want to take time to consider what do those options look like for the future."
Horner then threw Russell's name into the mix, having only previously joked that Russell was a free agent for 2026 in the context of constant questions earlier in the season about Max Verstappen potentially quitting Red Bull to join Mercedes.
"We're not afraid to go out of the pool," Horner said. "George Russell is out of contract at the end of next year. It would be foolish to not take that into consideration.
"There are other talented drivers that could well be out of contract as well."
