Webber says Turkey crash exposed Red Bull split

Mark Webber said his 2010 Turkish Grand Prix collision with Sebastian Vettel was the moment Red Bull’s internal loyalties became impossible for him to ignore, turning a lost one-two finish into the start of a deeper breakdown inside the team.

Red Bull had control of the race at Istanbul Park until lap 40, when Vettel attacked Webber for the lead on the back straight. Webber had been told to turn his engine down and save fuel, while Vettel had the stronger straight-line speed to mount a challenge. Vettel drew alongside on the inside, then moved back toward the racing line before he was fully clear, made contact with Webber and spun out. Webber carried front-wing damage, pitted, and recovered to third as Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button took an unexpected McLaren one-two.

For Webber, the tension had started before the lights went out. Red Bull had only one new-spec rear wing available in time for final practice and chose to fit it to Vettel’s car. Webber did not get his first run with that wing until qualifying, yet still took his third straight pole position while Vettel qualified third.

Webber said he had already begun to suspect the balance inside the team was shifting. In his autobiography Aussie Grit, he wrote that the period beginning in Turkey “signalled the beginning of the end of my positive feelings for Red Bull Racing.” After the crash, that feeling hardened. “When I saw on the TV the hugs Sebastian got on the pit wall from the team, I began having serious doubts as to who was really pulling the strings at Red Bull Racing,” he wrote.

The immediate fallout only reinforced that view. Before Webber had even spoken to the team, Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko had already gone public, saying Vettel “had to attack” and blaming Webber for the incident. Christian Horner, Red Bull team principal, said the team needed to get the issue “out into the open” and deal with it, but Vettel was then excused from the post-race debrief, denying the two drivers a direct discussion.

Webber later wrote to Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz, complaining that factions within the team “had adopted an immediate stance and spoken to the media apportioning blame for the incident firmly on me before facts had been established,” and expressing disappointment at what he saw as a lack of team spirit. According to Webber’s account, the episode made it “painfully evident” that Marko was pulling the strings, while his own attempts to raise the issue of the team’s pecking order with Horner “fell on deaf ears.”

The Turkey collision became the point from which Webber traced the collapse of the relationship. He linked it to another swing in Vettel’s favor at Silverstone later that season and, ultimately, to the already-broken partnership that surfaced again in the 2013 Multi 21 dispute before Webber left Formula 1 at the end of that year.