CHRISTIAN HORNER admits he is powerless in stopping his raging Red Bull drivers from fighting each other.
The Brit has been trying to manage the feuding pair after Sebastian Vettel left Mark Webber in a huge strop at the Malaysian Grand Prix.Astonishingly, reigning world champ Vettel said he would ignore Horner’s orders again in the future if it meant overtaking Webber to win a race.
And while Horner insists he is still the team’s boss, he revealed his drivers will not always listen to him.
He said: “ If they were in the same situation, exactly the same would happen again because they would race each other.
“All we can do from a team point of view is make sure they know what they risk. They will have the facts and if they don’t deal with those facts, they are answerable.
“What we try to do is to let the drivers race — the situation we had in Malaysia was fairly unique.
“The Red Bull brand is all about elite, extreme sport and competition between athletes.
“But while [team owner] Dietrich Mateschitz wants to see the wheel-to-wheel racing, the conflict is that from a constructors’ point of view, you want to bank those points.
“I don’t work for the drivers. I work for Dietrich and the team and my objective is to make sure we maximise our performance as a team.
“As far as orders in the future, we will let our drivers race. What we fundamentally want to do is to trust them to race each other.
“But as we have seen, whenever we try to apply control in the latter stages of a race, whether it be Sebastian in Malaysia or Mark at Silverstone, they have taken things into their own hands.”
Vettel says Webber did not deserve to win in Malaysia and even went so far as to say it was payback for not helping him out in the past.
The German’s behavior has raised questions as to whether Vettel sees himself as being bigger than the team.
But Horner maintains that he is the boss and insists Vettel knows where he stands in the team.
He added: “I don’t think Sebastian thinks he runs the team. He knows why we employ him.
“He recognises that he cannot operate without the team around him and he does not put himself as being above the team.
“I don’t feel undermined. No. I expressed my feelings to Sebastian, he expressed his opinions to me and his reasoning, and it has been dealt with.
“There has to be discipline and structure in how you operate, and without that structure we would never have achieved the success we have.”
Vettel is now going to have to rebuild his reputation in the F1 paddock - something Jenson Button has warned could be extremely difficult.
He added: “I’m sure he thinks it’s such a small thing that he’s done that’s wrong, but to go against a team orders is pretty big.
“I don’t like team orders full stop but you’re allowed to have them in the sport. If you have them, then you have to stick with what he team says.
“They employ you. They pay you money to go racing, to do a great job for them and win races and to do as they say.
“I don’t know the full details of what’s gone on behind the scenes but I don’t think it will ever be the same between Mark and Seb.
“I’m sure Seb is trying to put it behind him but that’s always very difficult. He’s going to get asked so many questions in many different ways until he cracks.”
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