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Verstappen comments on his relationship with Ricciardo post Baku crash

Utkarsh Bhatla
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The Verstappen-Ricciardo crash was the highlight of the Azerbaijan GP, as the two Red Bull drivers dished out some impressive driving up until the crash, before finally losing concentration and control to leave the Red Bull team shattered.

The duo were reprimanded after the race and both the drivers were considered at fault by the Red Bull management.

However, the most important thing for Red Bull would have been to prevent a fallout between the two drivers, keeping in mind the long season ahead.

Verstappen confirmed that the two drivers had spoken after the incident and that there was nothing to worry about.

“Obviously we talked about it,” said Verstappen.

“Daniel and I are completely okay with each other. We can both see that what happened isn’t good for the team. We’d already had some tough battles, but everything was fine.

“It was hard but fair. Now we’ll obviously need to go to the team in Milton Keynes and apologise.

“But then we need to stay positive, because I think we have a really good chance coming in Barcelona. We’ve got a lot of updates on the car, it all looks really good.” he added.

Mercedes had a similar situation with Rosberg and Hamilton a few years back, but Verstappen feels that there is a lot of communication between the two drivers and hence there isn’t much to worry about.

“No, no. We spoke to each other a lot after the crash. We were both so disappointed. I don’t believe it will change our relationship.” the Dutch driver said.

He them emphasised on the fact that crashes can happen on a racetrack, but they shouldn’t be happening between team mates.

“It’s obviously really bad for the entire team how many points we lost. There’s no place for a crash with your teammate,” he said.

“Something like that shouldn’t happen again. Coming together with your team just can’t happen. Crashes can happen, but obviously not with your teammate.” he added.

No team orders have been sanctioned as of now but Verstappen believes that the duo need to be careful going forward.

“Yes, but I don’t think it’s gone that far. That’s good, but we need to think about the team as a whole – and at the end of [Sunday] we didn’t do that.” he said referring to those team orders.

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