#I am a massive Seb fan and have been since 2008 however Red bull Seb wasn’t a sweet little angel

[race-week]

What happened between Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber?

Alternative Title: Red Bull Racing’s inability to manage their drivers

I’m sure we are all very much aware that Red Bull Racing is not the most healthy environment but the tensions were especially high there between two drivers in particular, Seb and Mark during their 5 seasons as teammates, now a lot of this is my memories of these interactions with some extra research thrown in when my mind couldn’t remember the whole situation.

Webber and Vettel’s first on track incident actually came before they were teammates. When Sebastian was driving for Toro Rosso, he crashed into the back of Mark’s car during the safety car period in Japan costing the Aussie his first win, afterwards Mark was fuming he stated “It’s kids isn’t it? Kids with not enough experience, you’re doing a good job and then they fuck it all up.”

Now Mark Webber has been known for his share of mind games but he is also from a period of time in F1 where mind games were super common, it wasn’t unheard of to have drivers having a go about other drivers to the media or in press conferences- remember this is Bernie Ecclestone’s F1 not Liberty Media’s, and each driver had their own way of getting into their competitors heads.

Now I’m not making excuses for either driver they both made some massive misjudgements over the years they were partnered however in some ways I do feel bad for Mark, he was the established driver in the team when Sebastian joined, however he was pushed aside for the Red Bull golden boy and the team (especially Marko and Horner) were always behind Seb.

There are a couple of specific incidents that come to mind; Turkey 2010 Webber was leading (in fuel saving mode as instructed by the team), Vettel was behind (not fuel saving) and starts weaving behind, Vettel goes around the outside, Webber sticks to his racing line and Vettel turns in on him. Their wheels hit, Seb gets a puncture and retires, Mark breaks a front wing end plate but finishes 3rd. The public could all see that it was Sebastian that instigated that collision however Marko and Horner shifted all the blame to Mark saying that he squeezed Seb (despite also saying that he stayed on the racing line) and that he should have just surrendered position.

There is also the Multi-21 situation in Malaysia 2013 which I’m not going to go into as much but the drivers were instructed to hold position turn down the engines and come home 2,1 (Mark then Seb) but Seb didn’t listen to team orders and overtook. He did eventually apologise to Mark and the team, but was not reprimanded because his lawyers threatened legal action if Red Bull tried, he also took back the apology 3 weeks later which indicated that it was for publicity/team enforced. Christian also stated that Malaysia 2013 happened because Mark squeezed Seb at the start of the 2012 Brazilian GP which is a long time to hold a grudge.

There’s also cases of Seb getting upgrades before Mark which is commonplace in teams - the higher placed driver gets the new upgrade first if there is is only one, however in Silverstone in 2010 Seb crashed out in practice and destroyed his new front wing so they took Mark’s new one and left Mark with the older model instead - Mark won the race.

I do think that Marks mind games had an effect on Seb and as such why he isn’t one to play mind games on his teammates.

Again I am not making excuses for either of their behaviour but these racing drivers will do whatever they can to get on top and things must have been quite difficult for Mark not feeling like he had the support of the team behind him, I personally hate driver mind games and think that they are a dirty tactic and I am glad they aren’t as commonplace now.

But I will say that are people that are using Christian Horner on the Beyond the Grid podcast as your full reasoning as to why Mark was a bully, Christian isn’t a reliable source, there’s backing your driver but I think he went a bit far. I’m a Seb fan, always have been but I think this issue boils down to Christian and Helmut not being able to manage drivers and these same issues are going to keep happening. Horner and Marko can’t manage two drivers, all they care about is their first driver and their guy who’s job is to stay behind him.