John Watson believes Red Bull battle gives McLaren and Ferrari hope
Former F1 Driver John Watson believes that there is plenty of competitiveness between the 2 Red Bull drivers, and that may play into the hands of McLaren and Ferrari as the season reaches its climax.
Currently Sebastian Vettel is trailing Webber by 14 points in the driver standings, with Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso in 2nd with the same amount of points. Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button from McLaren are further back
in 4th and 5th spot respectively.
Watson said that he has real concerns over the internal problems at Red Bull and for now even though at the surface it looks all good, he said there are surely some problems behind the scenes that the team has managed to keep a
lid on. He said that for Red Bull yes it is a reason to worry but for others it has to be the ray of light they need at the end of the season.
The rift between the Red Bull pair came to the forefront at Turkey this year; Mark Webber was all set to win the race and was leading, with just few laps to go his team mate Sebastian Vettel ran him close and decided to take over
Webber. The Australian was well within right to defend his spot but Vettel went the extra mile and used aggressive moves to go ahead. In the whole chaos the 2 cars collided, as a result the race ended for Sebastian right there while Webber dropped down to
3rd spot. There were scenes of confrontation between the 2 when the race was over. Mark Webber was adamant that he was right to have held Vettel off and blamed Vettel for the incident, whereas the German driver was not ready to accept his fault.
In the end Webber famously said “guess we would have to agree to disagree”.
That was not the end of problems at Red Bull though; couple of races later Red Bull‘s team boss, Christian Horner made the decision to switch wings from Webber’s car to Vettel’s just before the race. At the time it was Sebastian
Vettel who was leading Webber as far as the points table was concerned. The incident had enraged Webber and ironically he ended up winning the race. Moments after completing the final lap Webber made sarcastic comments on the team Radio saying “not bad for
a number two driver, is it?”
The comments were triggered by the justification made by Christian Horner that Sebastian was the one with more points, so he was more likely to win the world title.
Watson, who was a driver for McLaren in the 80’s, believes that McLaren and Ferrari should be ready to pounce on any opportunity handed by Red Bull.
Watson said: "McLaren may have to rely on the internal competition between the Red Bull drivers, like we saw in Turkey. There is no doubt in my mind that Sebastian Vettel is the chosen son in that team but Webber has that 14 point
advantage,”
However Red Bull is not the only team with internal problems; McLaren duo of Hamilton and Button had a famous verbal spat in the same race at Turkey, when Vettel and Webber crashed. It was the British duo of Jenson Button and Lewis
Hamilton who benefited and moved to top 2 slots with Hamilton leading the pack. With just 4 laps left the pit crew from McLaren had given clear orders to both drivers not to push too hard and consume fuel and save the engine. Hamilton asked his team if Button
had got the same orders, because he could feel him closing in. As Hamilton slowed down Button overtook him, the 2008 champion though got back his spot but there were some heated words exchanged after the race.
So it will have to be every man for himself from now on, as there are just 3 races left in the season.
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