Avoidable F1 Penalty? Ecclestone’s Surprising Take on Red Bull’s Strategy

Apr.23 – Red Bull has definitively decided against challenging Max Verstappen’s 5-second penalty by not requesting a ‘right of review’.

The team theoretically had 96 hours to decide, but bosses Christian Horner, Dr Helmut Marko, and even Verstappen himself indicated at Jeddah that a protest was unlikely.

But De Telegraaf newspaper reports that, while disagreeing with the penalty for skipping the first corner in an incident with McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, the team is officially moving on.

That is despite the fact that Horner took printed evidence – telemetry and onboard camera screenshots – to his post-race sit-down with the written media on Sunday.

“They were working on it right away,” former Red Bull driver Robert Doornbos, who was standing with Horner, Marko and Verstappen’s manager Raymond Vermeulen after the race, told Ziggo Sport.

“Horner said to someone ‘Print out those papers for me, because I’m going to make it difficult for them at the FIA‘,” he reveals.

Former F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone, however, thinks the team only has itself to blame for the penalty, which arguably cost Verstappen the win as he was less than 5 seconds behind Piastri at the chequered flag.

“It could have all been avoided,” former F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone told Blick newspaper.

“Why didn’t Max give the position back immediately? Because making up 5 seconds is usually difficult under normal conditions,” the 94-year-old added.

Horner explained that Verstappen was not ordered to drop behind Piastri “because we didn’t think Max had done anything wrong”.

Team advisor Marko, however, told ORF: “We discussed giving back the position, but then the penalty was imposed.”

But in his latest column for Speed Week, the 81-year-old expands: “There wasn’t much discussion about giving the position back.

“Our strategy expert and FIA contact said they’d seen several similar incidents in Formula 2 with no penalties – only warnings. Luke Browning did it twice and got away without a penalty.”

Some think the loss of sporting director Jonathan Wheatley to Audi-owned Sauber has impacted this type of decision-making. The new Sauber boss even admitted after Saudi Arabia: “I would have done something differently, or advised to do it differently.”

Another theory is that Red Bull knows very well that Verstappen deserved the penalty, but simply defended its driver. “I think you’re a very good team boss if you always defend your driver,” Doornbos confirms.

“Too much has been said about it,” he added. “We also saw images of the FIA president (Mohammed Ben Sulayem) pointing the finger at Max after the race,” said Doornbos. “It’s not the best look for the sport, but fortunately the championship fight is at least good.”

Auto Motor und Sport editor Michael Schmidt even thinks Verstappen made his situation worse after running off the track. “I think it played a role that he accelerated to shake off Piastri before the DRS zone,” he said.

“It would have been smarter to briefly take his foot off the gas, to show that he wanted to make a concession. So you have to admit that the penalty was justified,” Schmidt added.

Red Bull is now working on a significant car upgrade that Marko thinks keeps Verstappen in the title fight. “We are taking small steps and I think we will have enough speed by Imola to beat McLaren,” he said.

“We don’t think about the gap in the championship. It won’t be easy, but we have recovered from a bigger gap. I still remember how with (Sebastian) Vettel we were more than 40 points behind but still won the championship.”

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