Red Bull 'will intervene' in future Verstappen/Ricciardo clashes

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Red Bull Racing will continue to allow drivers Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo to race each other on track - up to a point.

The team's motosports consultant Dr Helmut Marko revealed that race engineers will henceforth be instructed to intervene if necessary.

"We'll let them drive free," he told Auto Bild. "However, in future we will tell the race engineers that they will have to intervene when we see that it could escalate again."

Despite the Baku incident, Marko insisted that there was no growing animosity between Red Bull's drivers - and certainly not in the way that hostilities between Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber had rocked the team in the past.

"Ricciardo and Verstappen actually get along very well," insisted Marko. "This was not the case with Vettel and Webber back then.

"Nor with Senna and Prost, nor with Hamilton and Rosberg," he added, citing some of the most famous team mate clashes of recent decades.

Team boss Christian Horner felt that Verstappen had been just a bit too over-eager. He said that the driver needed to learn some patience and how to bide his time after a series of unfortunate incidents in 2018.

Red Bull's Marko: 'Baku clash case is now closed'

"The start of this season has been tough for him," admitted Horner. "In many cases it's looked like he's over-eager.

"I'm extremely confident that he will learn from and recognise his mistakes."

Horner added that the 20-year-old Dutch driver would do well to learn from the approach of his older and more experienced team mate.

"I think he can and will learn a lot of lessons from Daniel," Horner told Motorsport.com. "Daniel provides a very good and rounded benchmark there.

"Even after the incident in Azerbaijan, there is a respect that [Max] has for [Daniel]."

Both drivers made personal apologies to Red Bull factory workers in Milton Keynes for their Baku clash. Horner said that both drivers had handled the situation "in an exemplary manner."

"The best way for them to make up for that is by delivering on track," he added.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.