A Formula 1 team comprises two drivers, but you sometimes get the sense that Red Bull Racing would do just fine with one.
For one, Max Verstappen has been so dominant this year that his points alone would be enough for third in the constructors championship, less than 100 points behind Ferrari.
But after all we’ve seen from the five-time constructors championship-winning team, having just the one driver would also save it a great deal of internal turmoil and embarrassment.
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Verstappen’s outburst against an innocuous team order at the São Paulo Grand Prix is only the latest in a very long line of tension points in the team’s history.
Each flashpoint has been set off by a different set of circumstances, but there’s a through line running between all of them.
They’re all examples of a serious power balance that is being constantly maintained but always at risk of spectacular breakdown.
Verstappen’s latest example of the trend is arguably the most outrageous.
The Dutchman had just been waved past by teammate Sergio Perez for sixth place to see if he could snatch fifth from Fernando Alonso.
Alonso proved out of reach, and he was asked to hand the place back to his teammate.
He refused — at first silently, then vociferously.
“I told you already last time,” he said, berating his engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase. “You guys don’t ask that again to me, okay?
“Are we clear about that? I gave my reasons, and I stand by it.”
It wasn’t so much as a demand as it was a dictum. Verstappen was laying down the law.
But it was the context of it that really underlined the flex.
This was a battle for sixth place, for eight measly points. Verstappen had wrapped up the title more than a month earlier; the points were completely immaterial to him. And there was not so much as a sniff of a podium at stake.
There was nothing for Verstappen to gain by ignoring a team order other than to flex his muscle.
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‘I GAVE MY REASONS’
Verstappen and his manager were seen locked in a tense-looking discussion with team principal Christian Horner after the race.
“I gave my reasons,” he told Sky Sports afterwards. “I’m not going to say why, but I think they understood, and I already explained it to them before, so it’s not new to me and it’s not new to them.”
According to the Dutch media well connected with the Verstappen family, the reason is that Max is convinced that Perez deliberately crashed his car in qualifying at the Monaco Grand Prix.
Perez hit the barriers in the final runs of Q3 at Portier, causing a red flag that ended the session. He was third on the grid ahead of Verstappen in fourth, the Dutchman having had to abort a flying lap that looked good to move him ahead.
Perez won the grand prix after Ferrari comprehensively fumbled its front-row lockout, while Verstappen finished third.
Verstappen’s camp is reportedly adamant not only that Perez crashed on purpose but also that the Mexican admitted guilt to team management at the following race.
It would be remarkable — and extremely serious — if the allegations were true, and some believe there’s merit to the claim given Perez was harder and faster on the throttle out of that corner than he had been on his previous lap.
But would he attempt to hamstring Verstappen by crashing his car when he could easily cause a yellow flag by harmlessly lock a wheel and escape into a run-off zone instead? And was a battle over third on the grid really worth it?
And why would he admit it to Horner and Red Bull motorsport adviser Helmut Marko afterwards, particularly after he’d just signed a new two-year contract with the team?
If there is genuine evidence the crash was deliberate, the Verstappen camp ought to encourage the FIA to investigate.
But in the absence of anything compelling coming to light in the 15 races since it happened, the events of Brazil can only be judged to be extraordinarily petty from a man who has had things all his own way this season, winning the title easily and setting a new record for most races won in a season.
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VERSTAPPEN’S TEAM, VERSTAPPEN’S RULES
“It shows who he really is,” Perez said on his cool-down lap.
“After all I’ve done for him, it’s a bit disappointing to be honest,” he added to Sky Sports after the race.
Perez has fair reason to be aggrieved. Countless times in the last two seasons, even when the fairness of the calls have been debatable, he’s dutifully assisted Verstappen in some way via a variety of team-order scenarios.
Most famous among them was his superb defensive work against Lewis Hamilton in last year’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. He slowed the Briton down so much that Verstappen was still in Hamilton’s pit stop window at the end of the race when the fateful safety car was called.
It’s no exaggeration to say Perez played an indispensable role winning his teammate the title that night.
Now he was in a rare position for a favour to be returned, but his teammate was far less forthcoming.
That said, there’s no escaping the fact that Perez is in this position — aiming to finish a distant second in a championship dominated by his teammate — only because he’s not been on Verstappen’s level for the overwhelming majority of their two years in the same car.
Of course part of the power balance inside any Formula 1 team correlates with the drivers’ performance on track, and the engineers and designers will gravitate towards the driver who can make the most of the machinery.
But a deeper element at the core of the trouble is that Verstappen hasn’t just brought the team into his orbit; the team has been consciously built around him.
Verstappen can freely flout team orders and issue demands back in reply because he knows there will be no punishment. As arguably the most naturally gifted driver of his generation, Red Bull Racing needs him more than he needs the team.
It cuts both ways too. Perez could rail against Verstappen’s behaviour and the team’s handling of it behind closed doors, but he knows he’s dispensable in the hierarchy. Even a moral victory would harm his internal position.
The team isn’t just centred around Max; it belongs to him.
HISTORY REPEATS
The team is guilty of enabling this behaviour, and the precedent was set long ago.
Verstappen’s crash with Daniel Ricciardo at the 2018 Azerbaijan Grand Prix was seminal for the Dutchman’s relationship with the team.
He moved twice in defence, the second time under braking, which resulted in Ricciardo rear-ending the sister car. Both retired on the spot.
But the team refused to call it as Verstappen’s fault and forced both drivers to apologise for the crash.
“The way it was handled at the time didn’t sit too well with me, so that was like a little thing that bothered me,” Ricciardo said in 2019 after switching to Renault, that episode having been one part of his motivation to leave.
And this single-driver focus predates Verstappen. It was recognisable in Sebastian Vettel too.
The German’s relationship with the team was remarkably similar.
As Verstappen, Vettel was a product of the Red Bull driver program promoted through the then Toro Rosso team.
As Verstappen, he was partnered with a driver not from the Red Bull program, that being Mark Webber.
As Verstappen, he was so gifted that the team put him at the heart of its operations.
And as Verstappen, those circumstances made him prone to some wild freelancing behaviour.
Two significant flashpoints from his tenure rank above all others.
One was the 2013 Malaysian Grand Prix, the infamous ‘multi 21’ saga, when he disobeyed a team order to hold station behind Mark Webber. His management even threatened to sue the team for breach of contract just for issuing the command.
But the other came much earlier, at the 2010 Turkish Grand Prix, when Vettel crashed into Webber in a botched overtaking attempt for the lead.
It was difficult to find anyone in the aftermath of the crash who thought Vettel hadn’t caused the crash — except for the team, which backed the German over Webber.
Webber, in his autobiography Aussie Grit, recalled the race as the first clear sign that the two sides of the garage weren’t being treated equally.
“Marko was surrounded by the German/Austrian media and blaming me,” he wrote. “On hearing what Marko had said, Christian seemed to perform a 180-degree turn and ended up siding with Marko.
“Later, when I saw on TV the hugs Sebastian got on the pit wall from the team, I began having serious doubts as to who was really pulling the strings at Red Bull Racing.”
‘I BEGAN LOSING RESPECT FOR HIM’
Webber’s account of the aftermath of the 2010 season is illuminating to reflect upon even now, all these years later.
Mentally substitute the names of this year’s protagonists as appropriate.
“To [Horner] it perhaps seemed the lesser of two evils if his down-to-earth Australian was the one upset, not the blue-eyed boy from the Red Bull Junior Program in the other car,” he wrote in Aussie Grit. “He played that game all the way through, right to the end.
“To maintain harmony within the team … the focus had to be on keeping Marko happy, which meant making sure Vettel’s side of the garage was happy.”
But most of all it’s the implication of power parity that rankled Webber.
“Christian insisted on keeping up the pretence that everything was even-handed,” he wrote.
“All we wanted was to be told the truth but he couldn’t do that, and for me that was a sign of weakness. It was at this stage that I began losing respect for him.”
Fast-forward to 2022 and the issue is still the same. The start driver has amassed so much power that he can overwhelm not only his teammate but also the team.
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It’s notable that Verstappen’s hasn’t apologised in the aftermath of Brazil and that the team hasn’t attempted to even gently reprimand him.
Horner and Verstappen both say that the Dutchman will help Perez if required in Abu Dhabi. Maybe that’s true — though the points situation makes it difficult to envisage a call needing to be made. But it’s also beside the point. Verstappen has already made his point. He’s already won the argument.
While he admittedly has to walk it rarely these days, it must be difficult for Horner to navigate the tightrope. And it’s embarrassing when he falls, shown up as looking powerless relative to his star driver.
But here’s the thing: Red Bull Racing can argue the system works, and it’d be right.
Since the team was constituted in 2005 it’s won more titles than anyone bar Mercedes and is the sixth most successful constructor of all time by titles won.
Maybe the one-driver model is unsustainable. Eventually Verstappen will leave or retire, and the dried-up driver pipeline in his wake will be the legacy of this era. And perhaps the internal power imbalance will become so severe that the team ruptures — Perez may yet decide his days helping Verstappen and the team are at an end, which would trigger some existential questions about that second seat.
But right now Red Bull Racing is cashing in championships.
You might ask whether surrendering to Max Verstappen is worth it to win them. The team might well reply that that’s what it takes.
