Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner has warned Ferrari and Mercedes that they will have to wait for years for the chance to hire teenage prodigy Max Verstappen, as the Dutchman is contracted to his team.

"As with all the junior drivers, they’re all Red Bull Racing drivers and currently he’s on loan to Toro Rosso, as is Carlos Sainz, and Daniil Kvyat and Daniel Ricciardo before them," he told BBC Radio 5 Live.

"It’s testimony to the Red Bull junior programme that investing in young talent and giving these guys a chance, like Max and before him Daniel Ricciardo, Kvyat, Sebastian Vettel, are all youngsters that have been given the opportunity.

"If you look back to Sebastian Vettel, BMW didn’t take up that opportunity with him and Red Bull has put its neck out and supported young talent and Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz are prestigious young talents.

"Of course having invested in them, and I’m not going to go into the details of what their contractual status is, but rival teams are speaking to the wrong people if they’re talking to the driver because the driver has a contract."

Ferrari and Mercedes are known to both be keen to secure Verstappen, who is only 18 at the moment, but has lit up F1 this season with some of his performances.

But despite the Red Bull owned teams current struggles to secure competitive engines, Horner's message is clear that Verstappen and Sainz are under contract and they will be inducted into the main Red Bull Racing team before any move to a rival outfit.

For his part the Dutchman responded to a question on whether he is in a hurry to get into a top team this morning in the press conference with a provocative answer,

"I’m never in a hurry but, of course, if you have two fourth places you’re very close to the podium, you want to be on it. But I still have a lot of things to learn and I’m pretty happy where I am right now – but hopefully in a couple of years I can fight for victories.

"I think everybody wants that."

This last line raised a smile in the media centre and beyond; everyone knew what he meant by that last line, but it did show a high degree of self-confidence.