RED BULL’S relationship with junior team RB “needs to be addressed”, says McLaren team principal Andrea Stella.
It comes after RB driver Daniel Ricciardo denied Lando Norris an extra point for the fastest lap of the race at the Singapore Grand Prix.
F1 championships can be lost and won with a single point.
Norris reduced Red Bull driver Max Verstappen’s lead at the top of the Drivers’ Championship to 52 points by winning in Singapore.
But the margin looked set to be one less when the Brit set the fastest time in lap 48 going into the final stages of the race.
Before Ricciardo, who was sitting at the back of the field and drives for Red Bull’s junior RB team, pitted to go for the fastest lap time on soft tyres.
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The former McLaren driver went almost half a second quicker than old team-mate Norris’ best effort on his final lap.
As he was sitting outside the top 10, Ricciardo’s team knew he wouldn’t get any points for the fastest lap.
But it would take one away championship contender Norris and subsequently help a Red Bull stablemate.
Stella said he didn’t have the “elements” to prove Ricciardo’s effort was motivated by a desire to aid senior driver Verstappen’s title bid.
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He said: “As soon as you invoke the sportsmanship, I think you need to approach this with a sense of responsibility that I want to have.
“I don’t know the facts, I just saw that Racing Bulls went for the fastest lap and they achieved it. I just find it a little peculiar.
“But for me, talk about sportsmanship and so on, I think it would be out of place.
“And potentially as part of a longer-term conversation, we need to put the sport in a position where, whether it’s trackside or factory side, teams behave in a totally autonomous manner.
“Because this is a Constructors’ Championship, a Drivers’ Championship, it’s not a coalition championship.
“Therefore, this needs to be definitely addressed.”
Red Bull boss Christian Horner didn’t want to hear anything about a tactical collaboration.
Horner said: “Ricciardo obviously wanted to end the race on a high note.”
Before later admitting: “But it was valuable for us because it takes a point away from Lando.”
Ricciardo revealed that the idea to go for the fastest lap came from his race engineer Pierre Hamelin.
He told Sky Sports: “I don’t mean this against Lando, but part of me is hoping Max wins by one point because I think I guaranteed myself a nice Christmas present, if so.
“I think, obviously, it’s with a little bit of Red Bull in mind, but maybe just to have one last crack at doing a fast one, if it is to be it.”
The incident occurred in what many expect to be Ricciardo’s final F1 race.
The Australian is expected to lose his seat to Liam Lawson before next month’s Austin Grand Prix.
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In RB’s press release following the race, team principal Laurent Mekies said: “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.”
Racing Bulls or ‘RB’ is one of two F1 constructors owned by Austrian conglomerate Red Bull GmbH, the other being Red Bull Racing.
Source: Motorsport - thesun.co.uk
