Aston Martin Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen has talent to boot but his current unprofessional approach will be a hindrance to him becoming a top Formula One driver. We have seen this season that his decision making is impulsive and lacks the maturity that we see in Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Raikkanon and Fernando Alonso.
This morning’s collision with team mate Daniel Ricciardo in the Azerbarjian F1 Grand Prix was no surprise, other than it could have happened earlier in the race.
Ricciardo ran into the back of Verstappen braking heavily into turn one, eliminating them both from top point scoring positions, even from a potential podium finish. Up until that point, Verstappen had blocked several attempts by Ricciardo to get past, causing many a fan to hold their breath when wheels were banged. One wonders what was going through the team managers minds on the pit wall? Arguably this is not the type of action you would expect from Hamilton, Raikkonen or Alonso. Rather you would come to expect them to let a faster driver through as there is no point in clashing and not finishing.
Autosport.com writes that Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko has blamed both drivers for their shortsightedness.
“We let the drivers race and then they are doing that. Unbelievable. Both were wrong.
“It was a racing accident between the two, there was not more fault for one or the other.
“We always let the drivers race, we don’t have a number one, we don’t have a number two, but we expect responsibility from the drivers.”
Marko added that the matter had been discussed internally at Red Bull, and that interfering with the race from the pitwall was “against our philosophy”.
F1.com reports that Red Bull boss Christian Horner also blames both and has sent them packing (like naughty school children) back to the Milton Keyes factory to apologize to the team staff.
“We allow them to race, we allow them to go wheel to wheel,” said an unhappy Horner. “We even discussed it in pre-race meetings about giving each other space. Unfortunately this was the culmination of two guys taking things into their own hands which shouldn’t have happened.
“There were three incidents between the two of them during the course of the Grand Prix. They were told to calm it down a bit. What we’ve always said is give each other room on track and we’ll let you race.
“They’d just about done that throughout the Grand Prix until that unfortunate incident. Not apportioning blame one way or another – they are both to blame with this. And it’s the team that unfortunately lost out.”
Well, that is the risk that a team runs but in this instant ask yourself the question, would this have happened with either the McLaren, Ferrari or Mercedes teams?
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