Aussie Grit (32 page)

What strikes me is that there are two very separate issues that need to be addressed and I hope we can do so as professionally and as quickly as possible to prevent any further damage being done to the Red Bull brand and
Red Bull Racing’s reputation. By doing so, I also hope we can move forward from here in a positive manner and concentrate our efforts on winning the world championships.

The two issues are:

1. The very public outburst and apportionment of blame in my direction following the on-track collision between Sebastian and me while I was leading the race.

2. The build-up to the collision.

Point 1
I have always tried to conduct myself properly as a professional sportsperson and a team player and I believe I continued to do so on Sunday, both on and off the track, in the aftermath of what happened. I participated in the post-race press conference as I would after any top three finish and without any briefing from the team and not knowing the full extent of the picture, I was diplomatic and measured in my opinions and represented the team to the best of my ability. I have been widely commended for maintaining my composure and for the way I handled the questions repeatedly put to me.

Therefore, I was disappointed to find out later that I was on my own. While the rest of the world – having seen for themselves what took place on the track – were unequivocal in their opinion as to where blame should lie, factions within the team had adopted an immediate stance and had spoken to the media apportioning blame for the incident firmly on me before the facts had
been established and discussion had taken place with those involved. I find this to be very unprofessional and believe the whole matter could have been controlled and managed much better out of earshot of the media.

Regrettably what’s been said will remain on the record and I’m disappointed that some people showed their true colours amid the pressure and a lack of team spirit. Now I believe we need to reinforce the reputation of our team. I appreciate that it is not easy but I feel I am entitled to an apology from the team for the hasty and inaccurate comments which would not only help to restore my confidence and demonstrate that I enjoy the full support of the team but would also go a long way towards restoring the team’s integrity and alleviating the mass condemnation it has received by so many. The team’s own website has received more than 1000 complaints.

Point 2
At the time of writing this letter, I still don’t have a full understanding of what happened in terms of the discussions that took place on the pit wall.

I had been under immense pressure from Hamilton for the whole of the first stint as he was incredibly fast on the soft tyres. I felt I had soaked up this pressure well and was clearly focussed on building a gap over the rest of the field. My holding Hamilton out for the first stint gave Seb the chance to jump Hamilton at the first stop (which worked well) as Seb wasn’t quite on our pace during the first part of the race.

Maybe I was naïve in thinking that we were trying to control the McLarens from the first stop to the flag but
this is what I set about doing. Yes, at times there were surges in pace from all three of us for the next 23 laps but keeping in mind that I was the leader, I was the first car to arrive to clear backmarkers and also the first car to arrive at corners where it was spitting with rain; it wasn’t easy. And last, but by no means least, as the lead car I was giving a very good slipstream at certain sections of the track.

However, from the cockpit everything felt fine and repetitive (i.e. the status quo was being maintained) until lap 38/39 when the alarm bells started ringing after obeying instructions from the pit wall to change my fuel mixture. I radioed the team immediately to ask what Seb’s engine situation was as I was now concerned about ‘friendly fire’.

At this section of the race, Seb was certainly under pressure but no more or less than he had been from Hamilton in the previous 23 laps.

I was thinking 17 more laps of this … yes, admittedly tough but I strongly felt that the top four positions would not have changed in the race. All four of us had pushed very hard up until that point. It was true that at that particular point of the race, Seb’s car was the fastest out of the four but only by a sniff.

Let’s not ignore the fact that I had led the last 180-odd Grand Prix laps (combining the three GPs together until the point of contact in Istanbul) and I wasn’t leading the Turkish GP by any fluke. So, I felt that after the first part of the race when I had dealt with severe pressure from Hamilton, and Hamilton and I had both edged a small
gap over the rest of the field, I had earned the right and was capable of finishing the job off by leading home a RBR 1–2. Yes, there was a lot of pressure from McLaren but I don’t believe it had reached a critical point as Hamilton wasn’t attempting any overtaking moves into Turn 12 at that stage.

In the future, there should be more communication between drivers and the pit wall about how they see the race. We shouldn’t be paranoid about talking and using our radios during Grands Prix in fear of people eavesdropping (i.e. TV networks) because at the end of the day, we have people who are well able to control Grands Prix to the very best advantage of the team.

It’s a fairytale what has happened to our team in the last two years, and I say ‘our’ team because I have certainly felt a part of it. We have to recognise though, how difficult it is to get two cars into first and second place in the closing stages of a Grand Prix. We have had many 1–2s in the past under no pressure and we have proved we can handle it. But this was the first time that we were under severe pressure trying to execute a 1–2 and we caused ourselves extra pressure from within our own troops.

The stakes are high for us as a team as our own performances and commitment to Red Bull Racing have lifted the bar to a very high level. We are a unique team and I believe this remains a huge strength in our quest for the world titles.

Kind regards,

That was my letter in its entirety. Dietrich was fine about it – but Christian went apoplectic!

After Turkey, as much as the team denied it, it became slowly but painfully evident that Marko was pulling the strings. More than that: there was an agenda – his. I had been assured by Christian that as long as he and Adrian were at Red Bull I would be looked after. They said they wanted me to win races; they even wanted me to win the title and I believed them. I did wonder, though, what would happen if they weren’t there!

That summer my management and I tried speaking to Christian and asked him as bluntly as we could to abandon his pretence of even-handedness and just tell us exactly where I stood within the team. Not that we were going to trumpet it to the outside world: behind closed doors, we said, just level with us and be straight. If there was an agenda, we needed to be told clearly what it was.

We tried to make him understand that he was doing a great disservice to himself by allowing himself to be undermined by Marko. On the other hand, it’s important to see that Marko was already a very useful conduit between the Red Bull Racing team and Dietrich, with whom Christian had little rapport. Marko had positioned himself between them, which helped Christian bypass bureaucracy and go straight to the top when important decisions had to be taken. In a sense, Marko had made himself indispensable. I have no doubt that Christian was put in a very tricky situation as that 2010 season unfolded. Not only did he have two drivers capable of winning races, it was looking more and more likely that they would also be in contention for the greatest prize in the sport. I’m sure he must have been
asking himself, ‘How do I keep them both happy? I’ve got to keep Marko happy as well …’

To him it perhaps seemed the lesser of two evils if his down-to-earth Australian was the one upset, not the blue-eyed boy from the Red Bull Junior Program in the other car, and he played that game all the way through, right to the end. Ultimately siding with me and upsetting Marko wasn’t an option for him. To maintain harmony within the team (and you’ve got to remember there were 800 people involved), the focus had to be on keeping Marko happy, which meant making sure Vettel’s side of the garage was happy.

Team Webber was old enough and ugly enough to understand that, but Christian insisted on keeping up the pretence that everything was even-handed, despite growing evidence that it was anything but. All we wanted was to be told the truth but he couldn’t do that, and for me that was a sign of weakness. It was at this stage that I began losing respect for him. It must have been uncomfortable for him to be a front-line spokesperson for the team without enjoying any real power within the hierarchy.

The long and the short of it is that we read the whole Red Bull Racing team situation like a book, none more so than Flavio. After my back-to-back wins in Barcelona and Monaco he told us this situation wouldn’t be allowed to continue. Not for the first time, he was absolutely right. Having a washed-up old Australian dog take the title was not part of RBR’s plan!

A
LTHOUGH THE BAD SMELL FROM
I
STANBUL STILL LINGERED
, I re-signed with Red Bull Racing for the 2011 season just before the next race in Canada. My driving contract renewals and negotiations generally began around May or June of the preceding year and concluded, but were not always announced, by the end of July at the very latest. I was well and truly in the championship hunt with my teammate as well as Fernando and Lewis, so I wasn’t about to write off my own chances by announcing to the team I was off to pastures new in 2011. I already felt things were starting to be stacked against me but they would have turned the tap off quick-smart and the momentum would have swung firmly in Seb’s direction.

In Montreal I qualified on the front row alongside Lewis Hamilton but overnight my car suffered a gearbox problem and the boys had to change it, so I was hit by a five-place
grid penalty and started seventh. Towards the end of the race Sebastian too had a problem with his gearbox. If that was a normal competitor ahead of me, like a McLaren or a Ferrari, you’d smell blood – but not when it was Sebastian. I wasn’t free to attack my teammate.

Ciaron had to be incredibly reserved on pit wall: from that year on there were coded messages between us so I knew when it was ‘not him’ talking to me. Clearly I could have caught and passed Sebastian if I’d known about his gearbox issue. Instead they elected to shut the race down from there and not push his car that hard.

There were two reasons for their call. They knew he couldn’t deal with being passed by his teammate; and if the car was nursed home Sebastian would avoid any risk of component failure leading to a grid penalty for the next race. Instead of saying, ‘Sebastian, let Mark through,’ or ‘Mark is quicker,’ they wanted him to do a certain pace at the end of the race which I then had to match. I could have raced at a totally different pace, but that would have meant me going past him at some stage, and that really would not have gone down well.

So what’s the best solution for them? Turn both of us down. An engineer from Renault came to me at the end of the race in a fury and said, ‘This is ridiculous. You need to do something, it’s just going too far.’

The same Renault engineer also said that when engines were routinely tested on the dynamometer, the unit showing the higher readings – the strongest engine – would systematically go to Vettel’s side of the garage, rather than alternating as had been the practice previously. The crux of it was that we were always free to race when my teammate was behind, never free to race when I was behind.

Canada had come just 10 days after Turkey so I bit my tongue. After the race Annie and I were sitting with Christian in the Montreal airport lounge and Sebastian’s name cropped up. Christian commented that the problem with Seb was that he read straight from the pages of the Michael Schumacher manual.

As I said, it’s on-track happenings that matter most, but there was another little off-track episode in Canada that left us nonplussed. At the time of the Malaysian race Seb had hosted a team dinner. I offered to do the same at the next suitable fly-away race, which would be Montreal. Everyone agreed; we booked a restaurant and paid a deposit. But after all the goings-on in Turkey the Red Bull Racing team manager, Jonathan Wheatley, called Ann to tell her that Christian no longer felt it was appropriate for me to host the evening. Jonathan added that Renault would be more than happy to take the team out to dinner in Montreal, but they had a particular restaurant in mind. Ann explained that cancelling our booking would cost us a bit of money, as we had paid the deposit. Jonathan went off to check with Renault and see if they would simply take over our booking. By the time he rang back to say they would rather not, Annie had come up with a compromise. Since we were so keen to present a united front, why not have Sebastian and me jointly take the team out and share the costs as a sign of team harmony? Of course that idea went down a treat with the senior management at RBR and the evening duly went ahead. We made a point of ensuring that the whole team thanked Seb as well as me. Ann and I settled the balance of the bill on the night – but it took until November for Sebastian to stump up his share. It probably wasn’t his fault, though: we got the distinct
impression the team had never actually shared the news that he was going halves with me!