RedBull got their season's 2nd 1-2 finish in Saudi Arabian Grand Prix and this time sergio perez was the one standing on the top step of the podium followed by max in the second position. It may look like a dream scenario for the team but incidents that happened at the end of the race and after the race, point to something else.
What really happened?
checo started the race from the pole position while Max had to start the race from P15 because of the mechanical issue in his car in the qualifying. Nonetheless, Max gained back the positions in the race at got to P2 by lap 25 out of 50 laps and checo was around 5 seconds ahead of him.
At this point, everybody assumed for max, to pass checo since he always had more race pace than checo. But surprisingly checo held on and sustained 5 seconds gap to max. This was the first time checo was seen performing on par with Verstappen.
Since max couldn't pass checo, at the end phase of the race team ordered both of them to target 33.0 lap time and bring home 1-2 safely but max kept on going quicker and quicker despite multiple instructions from his race engineer. He completely ignored the instructions and didn't reply to the race engineer as well.
On the other hand, checo had the fastest lap and was also told about target lap 33.0 but he sensed that max is going quicker, So he asked the team if they told him about the target lap time and what's his last lap time. His race engineer replied Max's lap time is 32.6, So checo felt insecure and said "Then why are you telling me to target 33.0"
So at this point Team let them race. This decision was very risky since it risked a 1-2 result. as well as there were minor technical issues happening in both their cars.
Things didn't end here, just before the last lap of the race max asked what is the fastest lap, His race engineer replied, "We are not worried about that". Max replied "But I am!". So his race engineer had to unwillingly tell him the fastest lap time. In the last lap, max went for the fastest lap and got the fastest lap.
In the cooldown room checo finds out that max got the fastest lap and felt betrayed by the team since they didn't tell him about max trying to get the fastest lap.
Verdict
I feel like the team didn't betray checo, max was smart enough to ask about the fastest lap at the last lap, and even at that time team refused the idea. Even if they had told checo about max attempting the fastest lap checo would have already completed half of the last lap so there was nothing into getting it back. I think it was a pure communication disaster and there was no one's fault (except max being stubborn).
If checo feels betrayed then that's a complete misunderstanding since the team never did anything willingly which favoured max.
I believe the real challenge redbull has is the relationship between their drivers and checo performing as good as max if not better. Both driver's relationships started to get sour since the 2022 Brazilian GP and if the incidents like these continue to happen and checo keeps on performing better then the team might find it difficult to favour either of the drivers cause ultimately team has to favour one of the drivers since there can only be 1 world champion.
(Also handling the stubborn pair of father-son Verstappen is a hard task in itself.)
But I don't feel this is a huge challenge but a common one, which all the top teams have to face inevitably. Nonetheless, it makes F1 spicier and more entertaining for fans and there's no doubt about it!
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