Red Bull boss Christian Horner has ruled out team orders at Red Bull for now saying “I think that we let the drivers’ race,”.
Red Bull, who haven’t been averse to using team orders in the past, have shied a way from using them since Malaysia last year when we saw the ‘Multi-21’ fiasco.
Horner showed belief in his drivers stating “We trust them that they race hard and wheel-to-wheel extremely fairly” about his two drivers, four times world champion Sebastian Vettel and rising star Daniel Ricciardo.
With Ricciardo 72 points behind Rosberg in the fight for the title, Horner believes there’s no point in issuing team orders for the duo as with only 6 races remaining it doesn’t make sense to interfere the racing the two are producing to potentially close the gap by a little bit and still fall short.
Horner hasn’t ruled out team orders later in the season if it looks possible that Ricciardo has a real chance to grab the title (though that would mean the Mercedes duo would need to have a lot of issues and not score many points for the remaining 6 races).
I think it’s great to see teams say no to team orders, as it certainly adds to the excitement of the racing. Ricciardo even said in an interview after the race with the BBC, that he’d much rather beat his team mate on merit and not gifted to him which I think shows a confident driver.
I’m sure Ricciardo will be a name to remember over the next couple of seasons. Bring on Singapore!
