Team orders make mockery of Red Bull
Friday 15th July 2011
Maintain the gap - three words that have wreaked of hypocrisy over the last few days since they were aired to the world.
That was Red Bull team principal Christian Horner's instruction to Mark Webber as the Australian bore down on team-mate Sebastian Vettel in the closing stages of Sunday's British Grand Prix.
After repeatedly ignoring similar advice from engineer Ciaran Pilbeam, Horner was forced to intervene, but in doing so, and with his remark over the pit-to-car radio played out to the masses, the Corinthian values previously adopted by the team dissipated in as long as it took to utter such words.
On countless occasions last season, with Vettel and Webber at the heart of a captivating scrap for the Formula One title, Horner insisted he would allow both his drivers to race, that there would be no interference from the team.
That view was endorsed by team owner Dietrich Mateschitz ahead of the final grand prix of the year in Abu Dhabi with the championship on the line.
"Let the two drivers race and what will be will be," said the man who has pumped hundreds of millions of pounds into his team.
"We don't manipulate things like Ferrari do."
The closing remark was a biting one at the Maranello hierarchy who earlier in the year at the German Grand Prix, when team orders were banned, had employed coded messages to engineer a result.
The upshot saw Felipe Massa pull to one side to allow by Fernando Alonso to claim the victory; Ferrari were fined US$100,000 for their duplicity, and the FIA made legal the use of team orders from this season.
So fast forward to Sunday's race at Silverstone, with Webber the faster man as the denouement approached, and with the bit between his teeth in his bid to beat Vettel for the first time this year.
No one can surely begrudge the 34-year-old opting to turn a deaf ear to the one-way chatter he was being subjected to. He wanted to prove himself to the team, that he is no fall guy.
But then of course you can accept Horner's fear, in his own words, of "seeing both cars in the fence and coming back on a tow truck".
The two drivers have past history, in Turkey last year, when they collided with one another when vying for the lead, sparking a feud that lasted all season, and to this day they are not friends.
But that is one incident in 45 grands prix in which they have been team-mates, with Horner's directive suggesting in this instance he did not trust them to be professional.
Moreover, why, with a 77-point lead going into the race and with the 24-year-old on a relentless charge towards back-to-back world titles, was Vettel instead not ordered to allow by Webber?
The Australian was undoubtedly the faster man at that stage having made up five seconds in three laps prior to attempting a manoeuvre on Vettel along the old pit straight, only to back off as Stowe corner loomed large.
Instead, Webber was made to feel small, as if he is the number two driver within Red Bull, and not for the first time either.
It's not as if it was the victory they were fighting over here, it was the runner-up spot, and with it a mere three points difference between that and third.
Would it really have been such a big deal for Vettel to have taken that position? Of course it would, because we now know how Red Bull work.
It is a hypothetical situation, but you have to wonder what the call would have been had the roles been reversed. Maybe we will discover as much at a future race.
For now, we have found out just where the team's priorities lie, and more importantly they have also shown their hand when it comes to the issuing of orders.
Red Bull may have preached their adoption of a fair play policy in the past, establishing a certain ethos, but in one fell swoop they have undermined all they previously stood for.
Credit: ESPN STAR (www.espnstar.com)
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