Verstappen and Ricciardo crash at Baku 2018

On 29 April 2018, Red Bull Racing watched both of their cars retire from the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku after Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo ran into each other on the main straight. Not into the barriers, not into another team’s driver, but into each other. The collision was slow by Formula 1 standards and spectacular in its implications, and the reaction from the team in the hours and days that followed made clear that patience for this kind of incident had run out.

What happened on the straight

The collision occurred during the closing stages of a race that had already been eventful by Baku’s reliably chaotic standards.

Verstappen was ahead of Ricciardo and appeared to move in reaction to the Australian’s attempt to pass under braking into turn one.

The two cars made contact, with Ricciardo’s front wing striking Verstappen’s rear, and both retired immediately.

The key detail that made the incident particularly uncomfortable for Red Bull was the nature of the contact.

Ricciardo had a significant speed advantage from the DRS zone and was making a legitimate move.

Verstappen’s defensive manoeuvre, moving while Ricciardo was already alongside, was the kind of action that generates stewards’ investigations and strong opinions in equal measure. Whether it was a misjudgement, a miscalculation or something more deliberate was debated immediately and at length.

The stewards ultimately gave Verstappen a ten-second time penalty, which was irrelevant given his retirement but carried a clear indication of how they viewed his role in the incident.

Ricciardo, for his part, made his own feelings relatively clear in the cool-down period.

Red Bull’s response

What followed from Red Bull was unusual in its directness. Team principal Christian Horner and motorsport adviser Helmut Marko did not soften the language significantly.

Both drivers were criticised, both were told the incident was unacceptable, and the team made clear that the reputational and points damage caused by two world-class drivers eliminating each other from a race they could have finished on the podium was not something they were prepared to absorb quietly.

The team imposed financial penalties on both drivers, deducting money from their personal prize pools to cover the cost of the damage.

The decision was unusual and deliberately public, signalling that Red Bull intended the consequences to be felt rather than managed internally with a polite conversation and a handshake.

Both drivers were brought together at the Red Bull factory in Milton Keynes for what was described as a constructive meeting, though the photographs of Verstappen and Ricciardo sitting alongside each other told their own story of two people working hard to project a civility that the Baku footage had not suggested came naturally in that moment.

The relationship between the two drivers

Verstappen and Ricciardo had been teammates at Red Bull since 2016 and the relationship between them had always carried a competitive edge that occasionally surfaced in public.

Ricciardo was the established driver, the seven-time race winner who had beaten Vettel in the same machinery. Verstappen was younger, faster in raw terms and increasingly treated within the team as the priority project.

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The dynamic had produced friction before Baku, including contact at the 2017 Hungarian Grand Prix which had also generated paddock discussion. But Baku was different in its visibility and its completeness.

Both cars gone, both drivers responsible to some degree, both standing in the paddock having handed a double points haul to their rivals for nothing.

For Ricciardo, who would announce later that season that he was leaving Red Bull for Renault at the end of 2018, the Baku incident was part of a broader picture of a driver who had decided that his future lay elsewhere.

The collision did not cause that decision, but it was consistent with a relationship between driver and team that was becoming increasingly complicated beneath the public surface.

What it cost Red Bull

The 2018 championship was one that Red Bull never seriously challenged for, with Mercedes and Ferrari controlling the season between them. But the Baku double retirement removed both drivers from a race in which points finishes, possibly significant ones, had been well within reach.

Ricciardo had started from pole position.

The day had begun with genuine promise.

In a season where the constructors’ championship gap between the top teams was measured in opportunities taken and missed, handing back a potential haul of points through an internal collision was exactly the kind of self-inflicted damage that a third-placed team could not afford.

Red Bull finished the season 319 points behind champions Mercedes, a margin large enough that the Baku result did not change the final order, but the principle of it remained uncomfortable.

The broader significance

Baku 2018 became a reference point in discussions about how Formula 1 teams manage the relationship between their drivers when both are quick enough to race each other seriously.

Red Bull’s pairing of Verstappen and Ricciardo was genuinely competitive in both directions, which is rare and commercially valuable but operationally complicated.

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The incident also fed into the developing narrative around Verstappen’s racecraft in his earlier years, when his aggression and his defensive instincts sometimes produced situations that his subsequent maturity as a driver largely eliminated.

By the time Verstappen was winning championships in 2021 and beyond, the Baku collision with Ricciardo felt like a document from a different chapter of his career.

For Ricciardo, it was one of the last major moments of his Red Bull story before the departure that surprised the paddock when it was announced.

He left as a driver who had produced some of the finest individual performances of his generation at Red Bull, and whose exit was shaped by factors that went considerably deeper than one afternoon in Azerbaijan.

FAQ

Who was at fault for the Verstappen-Ricciardo collision at Baku 2018?
The stewards gave Verstappen a post-race time penalty, indicating they held him primarily responsible for moving under braking. Both drivers and the team acknowledged that the incident was unacceptable regardless of the precise apportionment of blame.

What punishment did Red Bull give their drivers after Baku?
Red Bull fined both drivers by deducting money from their personal prize allocations to cover the repair costs. The team also brought both drivers to their Milton Keynes factory for a formal meeting about the incident.

Did Ricciardo’s departure from Red Bull follow the Baku collision?
Ricciardo announced he was leaving Red Bull for Renault later in the 2018 season. The Baku collision was part of a difficult year for the partnership rather than the direct cause of his departure, which was driven by broader concerns about his future at the team.

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