Vettel's breach of 'Multi-21' triggered by revenge, reveals Horner

Five years later, it's water under the bridge, but Sebastian Vettel's decision to ignore team orders in Malaysia in 2013 - and snatch a sure win from Red Bull team mate Mark Webber - was fueled by a sense of revenge remembers Christian Horner.

Webber and Vettel had been running nose to tail for the better part of the 56-lap race, with the Aussie just edging his team mate.

The duo had built itself a cushion over Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, and with a little over ten laps to go the Red Bull pit wall radioed in to both men, and ordered the 'Multi-21' code instructing them to freeze their positions, with car #2 - Webber - leading home car #1 - Vettel.

Vettel had ideas of his own however, and mounted an attack on Webber on lap 45 to wrestle the lead and ultimately the win, much to the fury of the Australian driver.

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While the controversy appeared to be a simple case of Vettel disregarding orders to boost his win tally, the German's motivations were rooted in something much deeper. Something that had occurred several months earlier, at the last race of the 2012 season.

"Sebastian was fighting Alonso for the championship and Mark squeezed him up against the pit wall in Brazil in the championship decider," Horner told Tom Clarkson in Formula1.com's latest "Beyond the Grid" podcast.

"That ultimately resulted in (Vettel) getting turned around by Bruno Senna. Sebastian was hugely angry about that..."

And Horner wasn’t too happy either.

"Because we discussed it before the race, that Mark wasn’t in the championship - do everything possible to support your teammate.

"But then there was a hangover of that that led into Malaysia. Literally two races later, split by about four months.

"So then you’ve got a situation where Mark’s in the car ahead, Sebastian on new tyres in the car behind.

"The tyres were pretty fragile, we’re telling them ‘right, hold position’ ... and Sebastian thought ‘f*** you.’"

For Horner, Vettel's sense of revenge pushed him to ignore the team order and put one over on Webber for his move in Brazil that nearly cost him the 2012 world title.

"Hundred percent, hundred percent. (Sebastian) told him that when they sat down in China. That was probably about as tense as it could get," remembered Horner.

The incident likely went a long way towards defining the inner-team supremacy at Red Bull, but it also led to a memorable moment for Horner in the days after the race, when he was invited to a royal lunch at Buckingham Palace.

"I’d been invited to a lunch hosted by The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh," he said.

"I expected there to be about 200 people at, and there turned out to be 10 of us there.

"I had this bizarre situation of having to deal with the drivers, and then go to lunch with the Queen and Prince Philip and explain to her what a ‘Multi-21’ was and why our Australian driver was particularly grumpy with our German driver!

"I had that conversation over lunch with the Queen! She seemed to show great interest in it and likened it to horse racing.

"And Prince Philip was incredibly interested as well, because he was enquiring whether we could have a look at one of his carriages (to make it go faster).

"It was a most bizarre situation."

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