Daniel Ricciardo does not think his relationship with Red Bull teammate Max Verstappen will boil over if they are fighting for the championship this year.
Verstappen joined Red Bull at the Spanish Grand Prix last year and won his first race as Ricciardo's teammate at the Circuit de Catalunya. Ultimately, Ricciardo beat Verstappen by 11 points during their 17 races as teammates last year and the pair look set to be closely matched as Red Bull aims for the title this year's new technical regulations.
"I'll be realistic, and naturally if Max and I are fighting for the title next year, it would be natural for it to become more competitive [between us]," Ricciardo told ESPN. "You might feel a bit more pressure, but if I'm honest I always feel like I race with respect and if he beats me fair and square I will just say that, even though I don't like getting beaten, he deserves it.
"I don't see any reason to have friction, obviously in Malaysia [when Ricciardo and Verstappen ended up in a wheel-to-wheel battle] in the end that battle was for the win and I think we handled it well -- we raced hard and fair. I think it would only change if we let the outside [influences] start to creep into us, otherwise I've had fun with Max and I'm looking forward to it and hopefully we'll have some good battles. I think the team is excited."
Asked what he had learned about Verstappen during their on-track battle in Malaysia last October, Ricciardo said that the 19-year-old had proved himself to be mature beyond his years.
"We've seen he races hard and on the limit sometimes, but when it comes down to it he's fair and clean. We got through with our heads still screwed on.
"He's young, but in racing terms I think he's very mature. He's been around the sport a long time, and he may have only reached puberty a few weeks ago, but beyond that he's pretty smart." There were only a handful of occasions where Verstappen appeared to have the edge over Ricciardo in 2016 -- notably the Austrian, British, Japanese and Brazilian Grands Prix. In Brazil, Ricciardo was suffering from a fogging visor and in Japan his engine was down on power, but he admitted there had been occasions when Verstappen's race pace had impressed him.
"For some [of those races] we found some reasons, whether it was overheating the tyres or something, but others unfortunately -- and it will always be the case and it is probably the only thing I dislike about racing cars -- sometimes the car won't give you an answer and you have to accept it was just like that. You can put the car on the track a day after and it will be completely different, so it's not always easy to find an answer.
"But I think with Max what was impressive is that he's got quite an aggressive driving style but at times he's also managed the race really well in terms of not killing the tyres. You think sometimes the way he is driving that the tyres are not going to last, but he's done pretty well with that and I think he's handled it better than I probably anticipated."