The Singapore Grand Prix featured a lot of unfortunate occurrences.
Sebastian Vettel passed Ayrton Senna’s record of wins at a race where Lewis Hamilton had hoped to catch him, while Jenson Button retired in what may be his last trip around Marina Bay in a Formula One car.
A spectator wandered obliviously onto the track, and the less said about Nico Hulkenberg and Felipe Massa coming together at the pit exit the better.
In the dying moments, Toro Rosso instructed Max Verstappen to let his teammate pass him for position, which left a lot of people scratching their heads. It was the final sting in the tail of a testing race.
It’s worth pointing out that the television coverage broadcast the team’s request on the second to last lap of the race, making the request seem less reasonable than it was. In reality it was probably made with a few laps to go and in the hopes that Carlos Sainz Jr could chase down the car in front while on the soft tyres.
It’s not surprising that the request was firmly and instantly rebuked. Verstappen has been trained from a very early age that he is entitled to the world.
You only have to look back to the likes of David Coulthard and Mark Webber for examples of drivers who took the moral high ground, sticking to their principles even when the main prize was within their grasp.
But would they do the same again knowing what they know now? No sir, you don’t always get a second chance and they regret not taking it.
However, in Formula One there’s a time to play the team game and time to be selfish. It’s when drivers can’t tell the difference that problems arise. Often this is when the drivers feels ‘wronged’, such as at last year’s Hungarian Grand Prix when Hamilton had technical issues in qualifying. Similarly, this weekend, Verstappen had suffered a glitch on the start line and rejoined the race a lap down.
So it’s understandable, although he was assisted by a few safety cars, that after clawing his way back to the front there was no chance on Earth he was going to let Sainz pass him. The question for me is, did he deserve to be so entitled?
“This year I have let him by three or four times. He was told to let me by four times and didn’t. It’s a bit of a pain,” Sainz said after the race.
We’ve seen the senior Red Bull team shuffle their drivers in an attempt to maximise strategy to great effect this year. If the faster driver can’t make up any places he hands the position back and everyone sleeps a little better at night. They’ve shown that such an arrangement can work, but it relies on trust and teamwork.
If rumours that Toro Rosso are not long for this world are to be believed, perhaps it’s right for Verstappen to be looking out for numero uno – and numeros due and tre if you believe reports that his dad would have given him a bollocking if he moved aside.
For Sainz, it’s time to stop being such a soft target and learn what Verstappen already knows: rules are made to be broken, especially if you want to get ahead.
If Carlos finds himself ahead of Max in any of the next few races he should ignore the team radio, value his race position, and issue the challenge to his counterpart that if he wants to get ahead of him he’s going to have to earn it.
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