Christian Horner believes that pressure won't play a part in the title fight until later in the season, but that Max Verstappen won't necessarily be any more susceptible to making mistakes than Lewis Hamilton.
Hamilton and Verstappen have directly battled on track in all four races so far this season, and Horner reckons that, so far, pressure hasn't played a part in the outcome of their fights.
But, as the season progresses, the Red Bull team boss believes that the intensity of the title fight will increase and that's when errors might start to creep in.
"Max will do his talking on the track," Horner told ESPN.
"Lewis has demonstrated he's capable of, excuse my French, dropping a bo****k occasionally.
"He's capable of making a significant mistake as we saw in Imola, and he just got very lucky that he wasn't a lap down and didn't pay a bigger price for it.
"Look, they can all make mistakes and we're at the non-pressured stage of the championship at the moment. As we get to the business end it will count for more.
"When five races are left and if there is still the points difference that there is now, that's when the pressure mounts up, not at this stage."
With Verstappen seemingly set for his first proper title fight this year as Red Bull's RB16B seems to be a pretty close match for the Mercedes, Horner doesn't think that the Dutch driver's lack of experience in such a scenario will make any difference to the title fight.
"I think he's got that youthful bravado; he's got nothing to lose," Horner explained.
"Every big pressure point in his career I've seen him deal with previously, he's stepped up to the plate tremendously well.
"I've got no doubt he'll be able to deal with it should the opportunity come."
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