10/05/2018
NEWS STORY
Still smarting from the incident which saw both cars eliminated from the Azerbaijan Grand Prix and cause a safety car period that was to turn the race on its head, Red Bull motor sport consultant, Helmut Marko, has said that Daniel Ricciardo and his teammate Max Verstappen will remain free to race one another but that if the situation begins to escalate the engineers will intervene.
"We'll let them drive free," he told Auto Bild. "However, in future we will tell the race engineers that they will have to intervene when we see that it could escalate again.
"The two of them have spoken," he confirmed. "There is no bad blood. You don't have to talk about it anymore. The book is closed."
The Austrian claims the situation is nothing like it was during the time of Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber, especially in the wake of the notorious incident during the 2010 Turkish Grand Prix, insisting that the relationship between Ricciardo and Verstappen is far more stable.
"Ricciardo and Verstappen actually get along very well," he said. "This was not the case with Vettel and Webber back then, nor with Senna and Prost or with Hamilton and Rosberg.
"In Baku we got the tyres into the operating temperature too late," he admitted, "the undercut didn't work, that's why the emotions boiled up. Ricciardo was too late on the brakes, but Verstappen could have prevented the accident by avoiding him."
Currently 8th in the standings, 19 points adrift of his teammate, Marko admits that Verstappen must now focus on finishing races.
"Max knows that when the next incident occurs the blame is automatically on him, whether he can help it or not, because he's been involved in so many collisions lately," said the Austrian. "We also need the points. Next time he'll have to think more about what to do, so in an emergency, you'd better give in.
"He doesn't need to slow down his speed or change his approach; just getting the car to the finish line is the main task at the moment. Max is confident enough to handle it. It will not change his future success, we expect."