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When Daniel Ricciardo made his late third pitstop for soft tyres in the Singapore Grand Prix, what may turn out to be his final race in Formula 1 already a lost cause, it was patently obvious to the watching world this was being done to try to aid Max Verstappen’s title defence.
Despite all the pre-season noise about the RB team trying to be less of a Red Bull B-team and carving out its own identity within F1, it remains effectively a Red Bull B-team with an identity - and more importantly ownership - directly connected to the reigning world champion team.
We’ll probably never know if this was a spontaneous bit of intuition on the part of RB’s team management, or a pre-agreed thing that will always happen if the situation allows, or simply a happy byproduct of the team’s desire to give Ricciardo something to remember his (perhaps last) race by. That was Christian Horner's line on it while suggesting reporters ask RB rather than expecting a clear answer from him, and RB's official take in the quote it put out from team boss Laurent Mekies: "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".
Ricciardo certainly joked (more than once) about this guaranteeing him a “nice Christmas present” and hearing “something about a $3.5million bonus for fastest lap” from Red Bull, which is ultimately the entity that employs him to race (or did until he's binned off for Liam Lawson).
Perhaps it’s not the best look in terms of pure sporting ethics, but when has that ever been F1’s top priority? The aim is to do anything within the rules that helps you to win.
McLaren, the subject of much focus this weekend thanks to its ‘mini-DRS’ low-drag bendy rear wing, knows this as well as anyone.
Zak Brown may well raise it with the FIA, as it is clear example of the A/B team collusion he so detests - and has been banging the drum against for a long time now.
But there’s no rule (yet) banning two teams being owned by a single entity, just as there’s no rule that forbids one of those teams deliberately targeting fastest lap to aid the other in the championship.
As McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said afterwards, “we just have to work harder to make sure this [title race] doesn’t come down to a point”.
He said he “did not see it coming” and was “a little surprised the highest priority of Racing Bulls in Singapore was to go and score the fastest lap of the race”, but a cynic might say he probably knew that’s exactly what would happen once it became clear to Red Bull and RB that Ricciardo’s race was lost and Norris was on for fastest lap unless someone did something about it.
“At the same time,” Stella added, “I have so much sympathy, support and friendship with Daniel that I’m just happy that he may add this fastest lap to his track record.”
On the question of sporting ethics, and such a tactic potentially even breaching the FIA’s code, asked by The Race’s Edd Straw, Stella refused to be drawn, pointing simply to the facts of the matter and saying “talk about sportsmanship would be out of place”.
At the same time, he pointed out this is a “constructors’ championship, a drivers’ championship, it is not a coalition championship” and said the issue of all 10 F1 teams behaving “in a totally autonomous manner” is something that “needs to be definitely addressed”.
Basically, Stella admitted McLaren has no evidence of deliberate collusion (though Ricciardo's own post-race comments show it was clearly in his mind, and Verstappen wasn't subtle in the gratitude to Ricciardo that he expressed when informed who'd got fastest lap post-race), and we understand the FIA wasn't unhappy with what happened anyway. But McLaren’s previously stated position on Red Bull owning two teams still stands - and this is the latest reason it thinks that should be looked at.
“At no point do I have evidence to say Racing Bulls went for the fastest lap to support Red Bull,” Stella added.
“I just find it a little peculiar.”
Such tactics are part of F1's DNA
Josh Suttill
This is the kind of loveable nonsense that's in F1's DNA.
In much the same way McLaren found an ingenious 'mini-DRS' technical loophole, Red Bull has exploited a sporting one in order to minimise the points loss.
Neither are dangerous and that's the line here that Red Bull hasn't even come close to crossing.
If Red Bull used a lapped RB driver to directly block or clash with a leading McLaren driver, that's obviously problematic.
But this was simply Red Bull smartly exploiting the stupidity of the way the fastest lap bonus points is written.
Let's not forget it was only a track limits lap deletion that stopped Haas's Kevin Magnussen from taking the fastest lap bonus point away.
That would be equally unrepresentative of who was fastest over one lap and equally impactful on the championship.
It's a flaw in the fastest lap rules, not in common ownership.
By owning two teams Red Bull has more capacity to exploit that rule, but it has so because it saved Minardi's F1 team from extinction 18 years ago, not knowing it might come in handy to give a tiny bit of help to win a title nearly two decades later.
The way you stop this is by writing the rule better, or better yet drop a rule that's so open to the artificial late pitstop plus fastest lap run.
Otherwise this has to be added to the glorious pantheon of common-sense inter-team tactics.
It's down to the FIA to ensure there aren't loopholes there to be exploited.
Already owning two F1 teams for nearly two decades doesn't need to be one of them.
