Australia will have a driver on the grid in the 2019 Formula 1 World Championship for the 17^th consecutive year, after Daniel Ricciardo announced that he would be leaving Red Bull Racing to join the Renault F1 Team.

Catching most observers on the trot, the move will see Ricciadro cement himself as a true Number 1 driver in a full works team.

This outcome removes a pillar by defusing the intense rivalry with his team 2018 mate Max Verstappen next year. Always on a path to ignite into one of the biggest inter-team battles on the grid, their relationship has cooled somewhat since the Baku carnage which took out both Red Bull RB14’s.

The top teams in F1 do not have such aggressive rivalry as Red Bull has endured in recent times.  Hamilton has Bottas exactly where he wants him, and Sebastian Vettel wants Kimi Räikkönen to remain with him in 2019, for obvious reasons. Now Ricciardo has a fast but less volatile partner with Nico Hülkenberg filling the second Renault F1 seat.

Australian’s racing in the premier class have time after time been contracted to teams where the driver on the other side of the garage is politically charged. It is fair to say that Aussies have had to show a lot of determination to make it.

In the modern era of Formula 1, Alan Jones, Mark Webber and now Daniel Ricciardo have had at some stage endured relationships with team mates that run from strained to toxic.

The Race Torque examines some of the more fiery moments of these relationships.

Alan Jones V Carlos Reutemann

Alan Jones was exactly what the fledgling Williams Formula 1 team needed as it developed into a serious contender. Jones hated politics and formed a great working relationship with Patrick Head and team boss Frank Williams.

The arrival of the first ground effects Williams FW07 in 1979 was a game changer. Round 5 in Spain was the launch of the car, and after just four rounds, Jones team mate Clay Regazzoni delivered Williams Grand Prix its first victory. From there Jones took over and won four out of the final six Grand Prix of 1979.

Jones was happy with Regazzoni as a team mate and had an undisputed number one status in the team. For all that, though, Williams and Head had concluded that Carlos Reutemann could bring more to the team than Regazzoni, a decision that did not go down well with Jones. “We’d had a great year with Clay,” Alan said a few months later. “He got a bundle of points, he was totally unpolitical, and I really liked him. When you’ve got a good picture on the TV set, why the hell change it?”

As soon as Reutemann’s recruitment was announced there were murmurings about potential strife within the team, but Frank was unmoved. The pair dominated 1980 with AJ taking five wins, Reutemann one victory giving Williams the Drivers and Constructor’s World Championship.

For 1981 Formula 1 World Championship, Carlos Reutemann, had entered the season on the clear understanding that Jones was the number one; that, if requested, he would move over and let Alan by. For a driver of Carlos’s standing this was hard to swallow, but he wanted the drive and accepted the terms.

On a wet afternoon in Round 2 in Rio, Williams ran 1-2, Reutemann ahead, and when a pit board ordered him to let Jones by, Carlos briefly considered whether he wanted to be first or second and concluded that he wanted to be first. After the race Alan was livid. “I’d like to think that when you shake hands and sign contracts on a cold December morning the other guy doesn’t pretend a couple of months later that it never happened. If he didn’t like the contract, he shouldn’t have signed it…”

The relationship as Jones and Reutemann had never been great but now went completely out of the window, and the atmosphere in the motorhome that summer was beyond tense. “Carlos says he wants to bury the hatchet,” Alan grinned menacingly. “I said, ‘Yeah, mate, right in your f****** back!”

Jones takes up the story from his recently published book ‘AJ’. ‘I knew what he’s going to do. He’s going to wait until the last corner, make the big magnanimous buddy hand. Like, OK you go through, and then tell all the journalists that he could have won, but the team orders dictated I win.’

‘Anyway, on the last lap it became clear he wasn’t going to honour the terms of his agreement. I thought “The prick’s not going to do it!” Sure enough he didn’t. He kept going. I was furious. I could have challenged him many times and if it wasn’t for the agreement I would have.’

‘The agreement was there to stop us taking risks with each other. Carlos didn’t abide by the deal that he signed. That is the thing that upset me.’

A side story to this was that Jones did not appear on the podium. This was a sign that he was so angry with Reutemnn that he just would not attend. Jones again takes up the story.

‘It was still pissing with rain. I pulled up to the designated zone and climbed out of the car and there was no one there. I thought ‘Screw this, I’m not hanging around in the rain. I am going back to the garage.” I then said to Frank “All bets are off!”

Jones finished the 1981 F1 season with a win at the final round at Caesars Palace This gave him third in the Championship. He walked away from Formula 1 after that event.

Mark Webber V Sebastian Vettel

Mark Webber says his old Formula One team Red Bull had an agenda to make team-mate Sebastian Vettel happy. Webber and Vettel endured one of Formula One’s frostiest relationships as the German driver usurped Webber in the Red Bull hierarchy to go on and win four drivers’ championships.

With David Coulthard’ s retirement, Webber effectively stood as Red Bull’s number one driver when a bright-eyed Vettel was promoted from sister team Toro Rosso in 2009. But, while the relationship between the two got off to a good start, Webber said it soured in 2010.

“I’ve just won the previous two grand prix from start to finish and then a new rear wing arrives and goes over to the other side of the garage. And I know for a fact the mechanics were furious,” Webber told the ABC’s Australian Story.

“They were very keen to keep [Vettel] probably a little bit happier because again, I was an old dog, I was the guy who was supposed to be a little bit washed up.”

However, Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner said it was a difficult situation to manage.

“You are never going to keep both drivers totally 100 per cent happy and sometimes as a team principal you have to make difficult decisions,” Horner said in 2010.

The 2010 season also saw the first major on track encounter between the two when Vettel made a low percentage move on Mark during the Turkish Grand Prix. Both cars spun and were out on the spot. Of course each blamed each other but after the multitude of video reviews and arguments it was petty clear that the blame lay fairly at the feet of Vettel.

A trend was developing that would fester over the next three seasons culminating at the 2013 Malaysian Grand Prix in Sepang. The day ‘Multi 21’ entered the racing vernacular. Webber was on song and leading the race, Vettel in second place behind him as the laps counted down.

With Webber in the lead, Vettel disobeyed a team order to maintain second position and instead pulled off a risky overtaking move against Webber to win the race.

“The team after Multi-21 were disappointed, no question about it, they were shown how toothless they were,” Webber said. “They couldn’t handle us two out there on the track, which shouldn’t be like that.

“[I was] furious with Seb. But the whole scenario was just ‘how did we get ourselves in that position?’ It was a pretty brutal press conference after the race and on the podium. We got off the podium and he just came over and said ‘we need to talk, I’ve just f***ed up, f***ed up so bad’.

“I said mate well, let’s just talk, let’s talk next week.”

But the discussion with Vettel went sour.

“I don’t know who spoke to him between Malaysia and China but we had a discussion in China and the discussion didn’t go well,” Webber said. “He just said that he had massive respect for me as a driver but not so much as a person, so that really affected the relationship. At the time, we could hardly stand the sight of each other.

“[Red Bull] just needed something to change so, you know, I helped that decision for them and left.”

However, Webber said time had proved to be a healer, with the time since his retirement from F1 helping to thaw out the relationship between the former team-mates.

“Seb and I are getting on pretty well actually, we had a good chat in Monaco, we’ve caught up a few times, it’s interesting to see how he saw things from his perspective and how I saw things, obviously we have a lot of respect for each other.” Webber concluded.

Daniel Ricciardo V Max Verstappen

Still in its relevant infancy, the two Red Bull team mates have already shown signs of picking up where Webber and Vettel left off.

Daniel Ricciardo has enjoyed enormous global popularity during his relatively short Formula One career. Acknowledged as one of the best at overtaking from what are seemingly improbable positions, he has also carved out seven victories – none from Pole Position. He is a racer.

But the young Dutch star Max Verstappen is fast. Very fast. He arguably has the team on his side, particularly the Team Advisor and Head of Driver Development, Helmut Marko. The throwback to Webber’s time at the team are quite remarkable.

But Ricciardo has earned his stripes. He totally demolished Sebastian Vettel in 2014, and was named Autosport’s Driver of the Year in 2016.

With Verstappen catapulted into the Red Bull squad from Toro Rosso mid-way through 2016, the dynamics in the Red Bull garage began to change.

Ricciardo has continually out raced Verstappen who has made a series of mistakes and costly errors. When Ricciardo and his Red Bull RB14 are on song, he is a match for Verstappen, and many times in 2017 and 2018 we have witnessed the two racing each other hard with little quarter given.

The inevitable outcome of two drivers giving their all exploded at the 2018 Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku. Lap after lap Ricciardo was looking for a way round Verstappen. It appeared the Daniel was faster and with DRS on the long, long front straight he could pull right up under the wing of Verstappen. The inevitable crash eliminated both cars with a degree of fault levelled at both drivers. A race team’s worst nightmare.

After the event Daniel said ‘It’s a pretty crappy situation. So I guess me and Max need to apologise to the team for how it ended. We were battling, I mean we want to race and we are thankful that the team let us race. This is the worst scenario, so that’s the crappy part of it. But yeah, we battled all race, we touched once or twice and yeah, it is not nice from a team’s point of view and we obviously don’t feel too great.’

Arguably this is one of the lowest points of the rivalry between the two Red Bull Drivers, but temperatures’ rose again in Austria when Ricciardo felt he should be given a shot to swap places with Verstappen during qualifying to try and get a tow on the short aero sensitive Red Bull Ring.

Christian Horner believes he has had the best driver pairing on the gird, and he may well be right. His loss may well come to haunt the Red Bull team.

The teams Red Bull are chasing have a clear number one and two strategy. Lewis Hamilton will be delighted with his new contract as he has Bottas as his ‘Number 2’ for 2019 and possibly 2020.

Ferrari too, may well re-sign Kimi Räikkönen as he is exactly what Vettel wants as a compliant team mate. Nothing was clearer than the two powerhouse team’s treatment of their drivers at July’s German Grand Prix. Both Mercedes and Ferrari told their number two drivers to either stop fighting or move over.

The call now to favour Verstappen in the final races of 2018 will almost certainly be orchestrated by Dr Marko. But Ricciardo is a racer so expect some fireworks between the two regardless of what the pit wall is telling them in the remaining Grand Prix.

The hard road for Australian’s in Formula 1 continues.

WORDS: Dale Rodgers
IMAGES: Red Bull Content Pool, Williams Grand Prix