Ricciardo and Verstappen 'ignored warnings' before crash

Red Bull boss Christian Horner has revealed Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen were warned about their driving before the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Ricciardo and Verstappen were reprimanded by F1 stewards after their crazy collision in a chaotic race in Baku on Sunday.

Ricciardo ploughed into the back of Verstappen as the teammates battled it out for fourth spot in Baku, bringing a premature end to their race with 11 laps remaining.

On Monday, it emerged that Red Bull actually raised concerns about the prospect of the teammates colliding before Azerbaijan.

“We’ve discussed it at length on many, many occasions,” Horner said.

“We even discussed it in the morning [of the race], that we wanted to avoid a repeat of Force India’s scenario from last year, and that we would allow them to race, but please allow each other space.

“Unfortunately that hasn’t happened. Our drivers have been racing hard, on the limit, but in our mind fairly, but then unfortunately this incident has happened.”

Horner says Red Bull wants to continue to let them race each other despite their tangle, but will review their approach ahead of the next race in Spain.

“We will discuss it prior to Barcelona, but we want to continue to allow the drivers to race,” he said.

“It was a racing accident, they’re both equally culpable, not one or the other more to blame.”

Horner also dismissed Niki Lauda’s suggestion that if such an incident happened at his Mercedes team, the drivers would pay for the damage.

“Niki’s perhaps more financially orientated than others,” said Horner.

“The most important thing is that they both recognise that what has happened is unacceptable.

“F1 is a team sport, the drivers are one element of the team, they wear the overalls and they get in the car, they represent the 800 or so people that they’re driving for.

“I think both of them will have taken invaluable lessons.”

Horner said the team did not consider pitting Verstappen or Ricciardo to get them out of each other’s way earlier in their race-long battle.

“You don’t want to penalise one driver over the other, so we tried to give them the optimal strategy,” he said.

“Ideally we were hoping for a safety car in the last quarter of the race there, to go with the ultrasofts which we managed to go long enough to do, but we never dreamed we would be causing the safety car.”

with agencies