Official line from RB team principal Laurent Mekies in the post-race press release:
“Given this may have been Daniel’s last race, we wanted to give him the chance to savour it and go out with the fastest lap.”
Imo thats a pretty weird quote to publish. On one hand you have RB slyly referencing something they usually dont mention because they have no say in it - their driver lineup being decided soon. And on the other hand it’s a preemptive attempt to counter arguments that Danny helped Max.
it’s a preemptive attempt to counter arguments that Danny helped Max.
That’s all it was. It means literally nothing for Ricciardo’s record or even RB since the point won’t be awarded anyway
It helps Red Bull and Max to deny that point from Lando. They didn’t ask Yuki to do this when he also had a pitstop gap over the next car!
The point is that Red Bull isnt supposed to use their second team like this to help their first one out
Absolutely ridiculous that one team is allowed to brazenly do stuff like this, and we don’t even get a murmur from the FIA.
Someone wears a nose stud or says a naughty word and they go wild.
This isn’t the first time the diet RB team has clearly done stuff to help the main RB team.
Anybody who casts their minds back to 2021 will remember Alpha Tauri moving out the way anytime Max needed to overtake, and defending like hell any time Lewis was approaching. I even remember Gasly being within 1s of the car ahead on a DRS straight and literally not using it, so that Max could promptly overtake.
One team on the grid has four drivers. It’s ridiculous.
Before anybody says it, I know RB saved that team when others didn’t want to buy it for a fair price. That doesn’t give them a free ticket to manipulate the playing field in perpetuity.
E: and before someone says Daniel did this because of his friendship with Max nothing more, or that he was itching to blast about in an F1 car fast for his last lap, this was a team order, not a request from Daniel.
Tsunoda in Turkey was another one, completely destroyed his own race to defend with his life against Hamilton iirc.
