Red Bull Deserved This: Daniel Ricciardo Recalls Baku Crash With Verstappen

During the 2018 season, one of the biggest talking points for Red Bull was the collision between Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo. At the time, Daniel Ricciardo was trailing his teammate in Baku, and they crashed on the main straight.

Now, more than a year later, Ricciardo expressed his view of the crash vividly in the Beyond the Grid podcast.

“I was pitted first and then eventually Max came back out in front of me so then I was furious. I said to the guys surely they’re just going to let me go this time. I came on the radio, he’s going to let me past. But my engineer said ‘no you’re racing Max’ which means no team orders,” Ricciardo said.

The Australian explained that he tried to outfox him on the straight and slipstream past. He maintained that he spotted a gap to squeeze past his teammate for the position. Unfortunately, Verstappen realized it too and moved over to slam the door shut, but it was too late and they crashed.

Admittedly, Daniel Ricciardo confessed that in the immediate aftermath, he adopted a “don’t care” attitude. He said, “I’ll be honest at the time of impact I was like ‘who cares, they deserve this’. That was my honest feeling. I wasn’t sad that I just lost points, I was like ‘Oh ‘fu*k you guys.’. Everyone saw it coming. I thought then it was 50/50 but then I didn’t believe that.”

How Daniel Ricciardo didn’t let the crash affect him

Once he had cooled down and had some time to reflect on his actions, he thought differently. At that point, he realized that he needed to move on from the ‘controversial’ incident. Then, in Monaco, he banished all thoughts of Baku and that translated into a win in the principality.

Then, a few months later,  Ricciardo suddenly decided to jump ship to Renault for the 2019 season. During his first season at Renault, the team took a step backward while the opposite was true for Red Bull.