How Red Bull endured its second car crash in two weeks

If you've ever sat through the drudgery of daytime TV, you’ll have also endured the plethora of dreadful adverts between. Aside from the usual hawking of useless gadgetry, there's always countless adverts for injury lawyer services.

And if you’ve had an accident that wasn’t your fault, you can call a premium £5-a-minute hotline and get advice from an array of ambulance chasers. The adverts are always seldom without a hilariously over-theatrical re-enactment to accompany it. Usually, a freshly mopped floor in an immaculate office would feature, providing the low-friction impetus for a struggling actor to clatter onto the ground and clutch their knee in contrived agony.

Perhaps someone at Red Bull Towers had been indulging in too much afternoon telly. Maybe that was the reason that the team decided to use part of a promo filming day – while the Formula Student UK participants were trying to go about their business in the National paddock – and instruct poor old Alex Albon, conducting duties in a two-year-old Formula 1 car, to re-enact Lewis Hamilton’s racing lines from his Copse clash with Max Verstappen. The team hoped to use that to prove that the accident truly wasn’t the Dutch driver’s fault and encourage the FIA into levying Hamilton with a harsher penalty for his part in the skirmish.

It must be mentioned beforehand that Red Bull had planned the filming day before the Hamilton-Verstappen fracas, in a bid to keep Albon sharp behind the wheel of an F1 car. Team principal Christian Horner explained that the team decided to pounce on the chance to recreate Hamilton's racing lines and get an understanding for itself.

"What we did during the course of the test was ask Alex to drive a similar line to backup the simulations that we conducted within our simulation tools, including the driver simulator, to demonstrate the outcome of driving that line and the necessity to where your braking point would need to be,” he said.

“We couldn't achieve the speed that Lewis did on that line. In terms of conditions, obviously it was pretty similar. And it was just a useful piece of data to reaffirm what we'd seen in all of our simulations.”

Alexander Albon, Red Bull Racing RB15

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

It seems that Albon’s National Accident Helpline-style reconstruction of events was what Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko meant by "new facts that were not available to us at the time of the race interruption or when the whole thing was dealt with”. Technically, he was right because the evidence hadn’t been 'produced' yet.

Naturally, the FIA looked at it and denied Red Bull’s request to review the incident. So much for a compelling argument...

As journalists, we’re predisposed to picking apart the ins and outs of Red Bull’s defence and exploring why the team felt Albon’s Silverstone laps were so important. Perhaps the team felt that its reserve driver had the tools to move somewhere else on track, albeit admittedly out of the context of having 19 other cars to share the track with. Regardless, it felt Albon sufficiently demonstrated that Hamilton could have backed out of the crash. But the course of events over the previous few days has proved to be so completely bizarre that it feels beyond parody.

Red Bull’s “shock” evidence puts one in mind of former Donald Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, who promised to “unleash the Kraken” in her dogged pursuit of alleged voter fraud by the victorious Democratic campaign. Her Kraken, it seemed, barely amounted to anything greater than a flapjack octopus and she now faces defamation suits from Dominion – the company in charge of the voting systems used in the US. Not that we're accusing anyone of fraud here, just to make that clear.

The likelihood of extra-curricular laps being enough to prompt the FIA to completely revisit its punishment of Hamilton was slim at best. It was folly from the start

In the official decision document released by the FIA, the stewards determined that Red Bull’s case presented nothing significant or new in the way of evidence, stating: “The slides in Appendix 2 of the Competitor's letter that were relied upon as New Evidence were not "discovered" but created for the purposes of submissions to support the Petition for Review. And they were created based on evidence that was available to the Competitor at the time of the decision (namely the GPS data). That clearly does not satisfy the requirements of Article 14.”

The next part of the stewards’ decision, however, is the most curious: “The Stewards note, with some concern, certain allegations made in the Competitor's above letter. Such allegations may or may not have been relevant to the Stewards if the Petition for Review had been granted. The Stewards may have addressed these allegations directly in any decision that would have followed. The Petition having been dismissed, the Stewards make no comments on those allegations.”

Christian Horner, 2021 Hungarian GP press conference

Photo by: XPB - Pool/Getty Images

One cannot speculate on what those allegations may be, but to draw concern from the stewards, something is surely awry in Red Bull’s petition to review. It appears that this had been addressed by Mercedes in its statement following the hearing, which stated that “we hope that this decision will mark the end of a concerted attempt by the senior management of Red Bull Racing to tarnish the good name and sporting integrity of Lewis Hamilton, including in the documents submitted for their unsuccessful right of review.”

Mercedes will have had access to Red Bull’s documentation under the terms of discovery which, in general legal terms, means that the claimant must provide its evidence to the defending party. This will have been made available in the hearing, in which both teams nominated three representatives.

The unknown allegations made by Red Bull within its case is a perfect metaphor for the current battle between it and Mercedes for the 2021 silverware. On the surface, there is a brash and ostentatious battle both on-track and off – but an undercurrent of something more sinister bubbles away underneath. The collisions and verbal slangs seem like they’re almost for show, hiding something very fierce under the skin. Something more than just bad blood.

For Red Bull’s image, the best thing to do now is just drop the whole furore and concentrate on spending its energy fizz-bucks on trying to win a title rather than staging re-enactments of hypothetical racing lines. It didn’t need the infamy attached to a failed review case and, let’s be honest, the likelihood of extra-curricular laps being enough to prompt the FIA to completely revisit its punishment of Hamilton was slim at best. It was folly from the start. The PR team will have a huge cleaning job on its hands and probably deserve a bonus if they're able to mitigate the damage to Red Bull's reputation.

What we have in F1 today is one of the best title battles in years. It evokes memories of ferocious title battles from days gone, something the championship has missed throughout years of single-team dominance and foregone conclusions. It did not need a team angling to get another in trouble – we had that 1994, after all, and the outcomes of that season remain veiled to this day.

Red Bull has added another car crash on top of the one it sustained at Silverstone two weeks ago and, this time, it’s of its own making. 

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB16B is loaded onto a truck after his crash

Photo by: Sutton Images

Delivering its first F1 title since 2013 should be Red Bull’s sole focus. The RB16B has plenty of chances to excel across the rest of the calendar and, barring any further ‘misfortune’, Verstappen looks to have the edge over Hamilton given Mercedes is predisposed to focusing on its 2022 car. Thankfully, Horner considers the matter closed.

Red Bull has added another car crash on top of the one it sustained at Silverstone two weeks ago and, this time, it’s of its own making

"This competition is all about marginal gains and leaving no stone unturned," he said. "Of course when you have an accident of that velocity and impact, then, of course, you're going to make a full investigation. But as far as we're concerned, the chapter is now closed, the stewards have made their ruling, and we will now very much focus on this weekend and the remaining part of the championship."

Although poking fun at political blunders in F1 is somewhat enjoyable, the battling should primarily be done on the circuit; there’s a reason we don’t watch civil lawsuits for recreational purposes. After all, there are few (if any) stories of Roman gladiators who protested the results of an arena bout on a technicality. The emperors didn’t tend to like that sort of thing.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB16B, passes a track side sign

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images