Horner: Early on in his career Vettel was like Verstappen

Much has been written about Verstappen's shenanigans on an afternoon in which, if he had kept calm and cool, he could have won the race but instead victory went to his teammate Daniel Ricciardo who showed his young teammate how it should be done.

But Horner is not perturbed by his young Dutch charge, "I’m fully confident that he’s a phenomenal talent and he’s smart enough to recognise areas that he needs to work on. I have no doubt that he will address it. We’ve already discussed it."

"His talent is extremely obvious, his bravery and racing instinct is not in doubt. His judgement today, he was too impatient. He will have for sure learned from that. I have no doubt of that."

Credit to Verstappen for immediately apologising to Sebastian Vettel after shunting into the Ferrari driver and ruining both their afternoons in Shanghai.

Horner compared a young Verstappen to Vettel, who won four world titles with Red Bull, in his early years with the team, "I spoke with Sebastian after the race and he appreciated Max had apologised to him."

"Yes, he’s made some mistakes but I remember when we had Sebastian at a similar stage of his career, it wasn’t uncommon that he also made some mistakes."

"Max will have learned an awful lot from today and will put that to good use in the coming races because we have a very quick car as we’ve demonstrated today," insisted Horner.

In contrast, Daniel Ricciardo delivered a flawless drive and set an example of masterful race craft and powered to victory, when in qualifying and early in the race he could not match Verstappen's pace.

Horner explained, "Daniel’s in a different part of his career to where Max is at the moment, who is still very young and fresh and going through that experience."

Verstappen himself was contrite but adamant he does not need to calm down, "It’s easy to say afterwards: I should have waited. It probably would have been the best idea but unfortunately it happened."

"It's not going the way I like of course, but does it really mean I have to calm down? I don’t think so. It’s just very unfortunate those things happening."

"I just need to analyse everything and try to come back stronger for the next race," added the Dutchman who lies eighth in the championship after three rounds, 19 points adrift of his teammate in the standings.