Toro Rosso boss Franz Tost has denied claims of any kind of “crisis” within the Red Bull driver stable.
Once flowing with talent, which led to a revolving door at the junior team, now the company is having to bring back some of those they previously dropped to fill seats.
Brendon Hartley was the first in late 2017 but was replaced by Alex Albon for this season, while, with Pierre Gasly now at the senior squad, Daniil Kvyat has returned for his third stint at the Faenza-based outfit.
“No, it is nonsense that the Red Bull young driver program is in crisis,” Tost insisted to Motorsport.com. “Dr Helmut Marko does a fantastic job and we have good drivers,
“There would only be a crisis if we had no drivers from our programme at Red Bull and Toro Rosso.
“But we have Max [Verstappen], who can win races and hopefully also the championship; the talented and fast Pierre and two fantastic riders at Toro Rosso.”
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Maintaining their talent has been a problem too though, with Daniel Ricciardo going to Renault and Carlos Sainz choosing McLaren for 2019.
A number of ex-drivers, including Sebastien Buemi and Jean-Eric Vergne, have also since gone on to make their name outside of F1.
This while, in the junior formulas, only Dan Ticktum appears to be on any kind of path to F1, but despite that Tost claims only the best stay within the Red Bull stable.
“It is not the environment that determines who is successful and who is not, they do it themselves,” he claimed.
“Their performance is the deciding factor and we can be honest about that. We say: ‘If you do not perform well enough, you are out.'”
As for having to bring back drivers like Kvyat and Albon, the Austrian sees little wrong with that.
“If they continue to develop and become more mature, if they show that they can do better, then they can just come back. That’s no problem.”