Red Bull drivers Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen have been castigated by their bosses for colliding and crashing out of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix when battling for fourth position.
Ricciardo rear-ended his teammate’s car, as the pair battled for position down the main straight, the pair retiring on the spot. A valuable haul of points thrown away by their drivers.
Red Bull team chief, Christian Horner told TV reporters after the race in Baku, “The drivers drive for a team and they both recognise that they’ve screwed up today and will be apologising to the team and all members of the team.”
“We allow them to race, we allow them to go wheel to wheel. We discussed in the pre-race meetings about giving each other space and this was the culmination of two guys taking things into their own hands which shouldn’t have happened.
“There was probably three incidents between the two of them during the grand prix. They’ve touched wheels earlier, been told to calm it down a bit, but we don’t want to interfere in letting them go wheel to wheel.”
“They’ve been very good at that up to this point. We’ve always said give each other room on track and we’ll let you race. They’d just about done that during the race up to that unfortunate incident.
“I’m not apportioning blame one way or the other. They are both to blame with this and it is the team that unfortunately misses out. Our intention is to continue to let them race but they have got to show the team and each other respect and give space.
“They have been reminded that they are part of a team and they have a responsibility in the role they perform, they are highly paid individuals, to act with the team’s interests at heart not just their own. The message was delivered very clearly.
“In Barcelona they’ll be fine. I have no doubt about that. They are both in the dog house, you can see that in their body language and they will be in the factory to apologise to all the staff prior to the Barcelona race,” added Horner.
There are no Team orders here, but you’ve got to keep it clean. No blame on either driver, both race hard and want to win.
An #AzerbaijanGP to forget for us today… but both drivers’ have apologised and we all move on to Spain! 💪 pic.twitter.com/K1G5dftOJ0
— Red Bull Racing (@redbullracing) April 29, 2018