Lauda reportedly cut Ricciardo and Verstappen's salaries after Baku

Red Bull lost big last weekend at the Azerbaijan GP. Max Verstappen et Daniel Ricciardo were dueling in the Top 5 before hanging on when the Australian attempted to overtake on the finishing straight. The stable of Milton Keynes demanded that its two pilots apologize to the staff, the Austrian structure believing that the faults were shared.

Niki Lauda, ​​the vice-president of Mercedes F1, suggested another idea. The three-time world champion experienced similar disillusionment with his team when Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg came into contact at the 2016 Spanish GP.

“It’s a disaster, we’ve been through this before. In my opinion, it's 70% Verstappen's fault and 30% Ricciardo's fault. (Max Verstappen) was constantly moving. Where could the poor guy (Ricciardo) go? If I were in their situation, I would have summoned the pilots with Toto (Wolff, the executive director of Mercedes Motorsport) to tell them the amount they would not receive in their salaries because of the damage they had caused. We already thought about doing this, but we didn't have to put it into practice,” commented the Austrian.

Ross Brawn, director of the Motorsports part of Liberty Media, for his part considered that the decision of the stewards to reprimand the two drivers was justified.

“I don’t want to pass judgment on who might be responsible or how a team should handle this situation, but I think the stewards’ decision was the right one”, declared the Briton.

“I would like to raise a technical point. Once Daniel took his line, Max changed course to block him and the Australian became a passenger. Ricciardo found himself lacking downforce while being disturbed by Verstappen's car and could no longer slow down. We often think that downforce has an impact when cornering, but the same goes for braking. What happened on Sunday was inevitable. This shows that we need to change the rules to make the cars more controllable in these conditions. »

Ross Brawn here refers to changes inserted to the technical regulations for the 2019 season which should allow drivers to surpass themselves more easily.