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Will we see ‘love, peace and harmony’ from Red Bull next week at Yas Marina?
Every Sunday during the Formula One season, ten teams composed of two drivers each race against each other in pursuit of one goal: The Constructors’ Cup.
But that is not the only championship awarded at the end of each season, because of course every driver is aiming for the Driver’s Championship.
That can put teams, and drivers, at odds over strategic decisions that are made on the track. In a sport where decisions are made at speeds in excess of 200 miles-per-hour, and success — or failure — can be the difference between having a seat for the next year, or looking for a new ride, conflicts can arise.
And those involved often have enormous egos, and long memories.
The latest example came on Sunday, in the Brazilian Grand Prix. With under ten laps to go, Red Bull teammates Sergio Pérez and Max Verstappen were in sixth and seventh place, respectively. But Verstappen’s car was faster at that point, and Pérez was struggling to hold his teammate off. As a result, the order came from above: Let Verstappen pass.
It was a reasonable decision, and one that could have helped Pérez himself. Verstappen has already clinched the title for the season, and Red Bull also clinched their first Constructors’ Cup a few weeks ago, breaking a years-long stranglehold Mercedes had on that honor. But Pérez is locked in a battle with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc for second in the driver standings, and if he could not chase down Leclerc in the race, Verstappen knocking the Ferrari driver down a position would help Pérez as well.
However, Verstappen could not run the Ferrari pair of Leclerc and Carlos Sainz down, and when he failed to overtake Alpine’s Fernando Alonso for fifth place, new orders came in from pit road. Verstappen was to let Pérez pass.
He did not:
After the race, speculation grew that Verstappen had the Monaco Grand Prix on his mind, the incident referred to when he mentioned “last summer.” During qualifying for the race at the end of May, Pérez spun and crashed during the final segment of qualifying, and the ensuing red flag prevented the rest of the field — including Verstappen — from running one more lap.
Verstappen qualified fourth as a result, and finished in third, with Pérez winning the race.
However, it was later reported that Pérez admitted to Red Bull Team President Christian Horner and consultant Helmut Marko that he crashed on purpose, looking to cause a red flag and ensure his place at the top of the grid.
After Sunday’s race in Brazil, Verstappen was asked if the incident in Monaco was on his mind. “You can decide that; I’m not going to say it,” he stated in response.
Verstappen did state, however, that he would be willing to help Pérez in the final race of the season, the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, if he could: “I think it’s more important as a team now that we finally sat together, altogether, and we really put everything on the table, and we move forward. We go to Abu Dhabi, of course we want to win the race, but also if there’s a chance to help Checo I will, but that’s why it was important we had this meeting now.”
For his part, Pérez vowed to “keep working together as a team.”
Whether that happens, though, remains to be seen. Because one of the strangest aspects to F1 is the relationship between teammates. It is, in addition to being a team sport, an individual sport. Drivers are looking out for their team, and themselves.
And Verstappen is not the first driver to disregard an order from above to help out a teammate, nor will he be the last. In fact, F1 history is filled with drivers disregarding orders from their team, whether due to ego, the will to win, or spite.
Back during the 2013 season, Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber were teammates at Red Bull. Vettel was a three-time champion, while Webber missed out on a title during the 2010 season when he crashed out of the Korean Grand Prix, and ended up finishing third in the standings.
During the 2013 Malaysian Grand Prix, Webber and Vettel were in first and second place, respectively, as the race reached its final laps. Word came from pit road that the drivers were to maintain their position, a request now known as ‘Multi 21.’ Vettel, in second place, was to remain behind Webber.
Vettel, however, had different ideas. The German tracked down Webber with 13 laps to go, overtaking him in Turn 4 and racing to the victory.
Speaking about the incident years later, Red Bull Team President Christian Horner indicated that in his mind, Vettel had an incident from the prior season on his mind when he disregarded the order. At the end of the 2012 campaign, Vettel began the Brazilian Grand Prix, the final race of the season, with a 13-point lead over Alonso. But at the start of the event, Webber squeezed Vettel into a wall, sending his teammate into a spin.
Vettel recovered to finish in sixth place, securing the championship by three points to become the youngest ever three-time champion.
But in Horner’s mind, that incident was the reason for Vettel’s pass a year later:
It probably culminated at the end of 2012 when Sebastian was fighting Alonso for the championship and Mark squeezed him up against the pit wall at the start of the race in Brazil, in the championship decider. This ultimately resulted in him getting turned round by Bruno Senna. Sebastian was hugely angry about that.
There was a hangover of that that led into Malaysia, literally two races later, split by four or five months. You had a situation where you have Mark in the car ahead, Sebastian on new tyres in the car behind. The tyres were pretty fragile, we’re telling them hold position and Sebastian thought ‘F*** you’.
That was not the only kind of incident in Vettel’s career. During the 2019 season, when Vettel was driving for Ferrari along with Leclerc, the team had a plan in place for the Russian Grand Prix. Leclerc qualified on the pole, with Lewis Hamilton in second and Vettel in third. Prior to the race, the Ferrari team agreed to have Leclerc lead off the line, and Vettel to slide in behind him.
Vettel, however, changed things up after the start, and quickly overtook Leclerc. When word came from the team for the drivers to switch places, and Vettel to let Leclerc pass him, the German refused. Ultimately, the team would bring Leclerc in for fresh tires a few laps ahead of Vettel, allowing Leclerc to move ahead of him on the track.
Leclerc finished third, while Vettel retired after the 28th lap when his car lost power.
Following the race, Vettel admitted he was in the wrong: “What agreement there was or wasn’t, or who is right and who isn’t, is perhaps not so important. But of course I got the message at the radio to change the place, and did not do it. And that was certainly not right.”
Then there was the 2014 Hungarian Grand Prix, and the battle between Mercedes teammates Hamilton and Nico Rosberg. They entered the event atop the driver’s standings, with Rosberg 14 points clear of his Mercedes teammate.
Rosberg started on the pole, while Hamilton was forced to start at the back of the field due to a mechanical failure during qualifying. But Hamilton slowly worked his way through the field, and after a series of pit stops, Hamilton was ahead of his teammate. With Hamilton on medium tires, and Rosberg needing to make one more stop to change out his soft tires, the order came from Mercedes.
Hamilton was to let Rosberg pass.
However, Hamilton refused. “I’m not slowing down for Nico—if he gets closer he can overtake,” he radioed back to his crew. Rosberg was not happy, and complained to his team that Hamilton was not letting him pass. His team replied: “He’s had the message, Nico.”
Rosberg would eventually pit, and the two Mercedes teammates fought to the wire for third place. It would be Hamilton who reached the podium, finishing in that third spot, while Rosberg held on for fourth.
After the race, Hamilton made no apologies for refusing the order. When asked if he did not want to slow down for Rosberg because he would have lost ground to Alonso and Daniel Ricciardo, who he was chasing, Hamilton responded:
Also I would have lost points to [Rosberg]. If I’d let him past when they asked me he would’ve beaten me so I’m not quite sure what the situation was there but I don’t want to comment on it, I’ll go and speak to everyone and give them the benefit of the doubt. I’m sure it was done for the right reasons perhaps but ultimately I would have lost points today, so it definitely feels strange to me but I’m grateful that I took the right decision for myself.
Mercedes executive direction Toto Wolff admitted after the race that decisions like these are not easy for everyone involved. “We need to look at the situation and analyse it, not make a knee-jerk reaction. It’s not an easy call, you’ve got to look at all the pros and cons.”
That is exactly what Mercedes tried to do two years later, in the finale of the 2016 season in Abu Dhabi. Hamilton and Rosberg entered the final race of the campaign with 12 points separating them, with Rosberg in the lead. Both drivers had a chance to secure the Driver’s Championship depending on how the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix unfolded.
As the Grand Prix wound down, Hamilton was in the lead, with his teammate a few spots behind him. Hamilton would secure the title if he won the race, and Rosberg finished fourth or lower. In an effort to make things harder for Rosberg to advance through the field, Hamilton slowed his pace, hoping to back Rosberg up into the chasing pack.
While doing so, Hamilton ignored repeated requests from the Mercedes bosses to pick up his pace. They had their eyes on Vettel, who was gaining ground.
But Hamilton thought the best way he could secure the title was to ignore their requests.
Hamilton would win the race, but Rosberg found a way to place just behind him, earning enough points to secure the Driver’s Championship.
Rosberg would retire from F1 racing after winning the title, having achieved his lifelong goal of becoming a champion. Hamilton would admit to feeling “disrespected” by Mercedes: “That was one of many uncomfortable moments of the year,” he said. “Ultimately, seeing what had been said afterwards, I felt quite disrespected by the individuals who had spoken. You definitely don’t expect that from those who are in charge of so many people.”
Which brings us back to Red Bull, and the pair of Pérez and Verstappen. The team is probably hoping that any animosity Verstappen harbored after the Monaco incident is truly behind the team, and the duo can really work together in the season finale to ensure Pérez finishes second in the Driver’s Championship.
But if past is prologue, that might not come to fruition. After all, the relationship between Vettel, Red Bull, and Webber fractured in the wake of their Multi-21 incident, and Weber would leave F1 altogether at the end of the campaign.
Then there is the relationship between Hamilton and Rosberg. The two were childhood friends, but that friendship ended almost as soon as they became teammates. “It [the friendship breakdown] happened immediately when we were fighting for the world championship, not before,” Rosberg told Eurosport earlier this year. “But that’s always the case: When you’re fighting for success in every race and for titles, it doesn’t work anymore. It was a build-up from one race to the next. If you want to decide the world championship for yourself, you can’t play ‘love, peace and harmony’.”
Will we see “love, peace and harmony” next weekend in Abu Dhabi between Verstappen and Pérez?
Only time will tell, but Horner certainly hopes so.
“Max has given his commitment as well and we’ll be doing the best we can in Abu Dhabi to achieve that. So it’s a straight fight between Checo and Charles and if Max can help in any way he will do,” Horner told Sky Sports.
Horner continued: “For us Checo’s now tied on points with Charles. Ferrari didn’t switch their cars around. We go into Abu Dhabi, as a team to do the very best that we can for Checo to achieve that second place and Max will fully support that.”
But in a sport with both individual, and team, goals, that kind of harmony might be difficult to come by.
If not impossible.
