MILAN, Italy -- Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo say being given a car with championship-winning potential is key to either of them having a long-term future at Red Bull.
Red Bull has won just one race this year and lies a distant third in the pecking order behind Mercedes and Ferrari. The team, which dominated the start of the current decade, has struggled since the introduction of V6 turbos in 2014, with just six wins to its name in that time.
Red Bull insists Verstappen is tied down to a deal until the end of 2019, but a spate of mechanical retirements this season -- most recently on the eighth lap of the Belgian Grand Prix -- have led him and father Jos hinting at a loss in faith in the team and its partnership with Renault.
When asked what Red Bull needed to do to convince him to stay, Verstappen told ESPN: "It's very simple -- just give me a winning car. And then all the problems are solved."
For Ricciardo, the desire for a winning car is arguably greater. When the Australian joined the team in 2014, it was to partner the man who had won the previous four world titles, Sebastian Vettel. But Red Bull and Renault's run of dominance ended abruptly with the introduction of V6 turbos that same season.
Despite claiming three wins in 2014, Ricciardo did not have the car to challenge for a championship, and he has seen the team fall short of expectations of imminent title challenges in 2015 and 2017. This current season was the most disappointing, with Red Bull's aerodynamic prowess of the early 2010s prompting speculation it would be the team to beat under 2017's radically revised regulations.
Ricciardo, who is out of contract at the end of next season, hints he will have to look elsewhere if a competitive car is not provided to him in 2018.
"Probably more so for me," Ricciardo said of his desire for a title-winning car. "In terms of I'm a bit older but I've been with Red Bull for quite a few years now and I think the difference is when I joined Red Bull Racing they were the champions, so in mind I was getting into the best car on the grid.
"Where when he joined we'd kind of already fell away from that a bit so I think the expectation in his mind was already dropped. So if anything for me it should be stronger, the want and the need for this, but at the end of the day we're two of the most competitive drivers on the grid so it's natural we both want winning material.
"I know we both want it to be here -- ideally we start winning with Red Bull and then happy days. But I'd love to see at the end of the year us in a winning position more consistently, that would be good."