The Vettel-Webber Feud Blows Like An Icelandic Volcano

The harmony at Red Bull just went cablamo like a Renault engine in 2009. Seb Vettel and Mark Webber put an end to it with their duel in Turkey.

I’ll admit it right up front. I enjoy a good internal team brawl between two drivers. Watching Alonso and Hamilton out childish one another at McLaren a few years ago was the stuff of high drama. You practically expected one of them to jump out of an alley and club the other one in the leg!


The Red Bull rivalry has been much slower to reach atomic temperatures. The team was very good in 2009 and is dominant in 2010. The drivers seemed to get along pretty well if for no other reason that they seemed to be surprised as everyone else that the privateer team was doing so well.

The last few races have seen an end to that. It all started to show up in the facial expressions of whichever driver was not finishing on the top step of the podium. There would be that vacant stare as they tried to not look pissed off. You could see the magma rising as the volcano tuned up.

Then a funny thing happened. To the shock of everyone, Mark Webber started to dominate his teammate. He picked off pole after pole and win after win. Seb was good about it at first, but the fire started burning hotter and hotter. Then came Turkey.

I have to admit that I find the entire Turkey “coming together” a bit odd. Despite driving the same car, Seb suddenly became faster the last two laps before the incident. This was apparently because the team told Webber to save fuel. It looked for all the world like the team was favoring Vettel and trying to give him a chance to go front, but who can really say.



Regardless, Vettel was suddenly all over Webber. I have to admit I see fault in both sides of the argument. Vettel tried to pass offline in the narrowest part of the very wide track. It looked for all the world like a desperate move in my opinion. Then he made it and got out in front of Webber. Despite this, Webber didn’t exactly make room for his teammate. He didn’t move into Vettel, but he didn’t exactly show the respect seen in the Hamilton-Button duel.

The end result was two drivers that clearly are butting heads. The responses of Webber to questions in the televised interview of the top three finishers was hilarious. He didn’t say much that was controversial, but the long pauses before answering surely said more about what he wanted to say than the words he used. Vettel felt just as strongly that he had been wronged.

So, where do we go from here with these two? The team clearly favors Vettel. Expect it to provide him with the advantage and Webber to grow very frustrated. This is a feud that has only started and should get really heated as we move along.

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