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Red Bull driver Daniil Kvyat has revealed that the mid-season switch with Max Verstappen in 2016 felt like a stab in the back at the time. The Russian driver was promoted to senior Red Bull driver in 2015, a year after his F1 debut with Torro Rosso. Kvyat impressed that season as he ended up outscoring Daniel Ricciardo.
However, with Verstappen impressing everyone on the grid at Torro Rosso in 2015 and Kvyat's tendency to be involved in crashes, Red Bull opted to swap the two drivers.
While Verstappen's career continued to surge after that, Kvyat's career went the other way. He was eventually shuffled out of AlphaTauri in the coming years as his career came to an end.
Speaking about the situation on the Track Limits podcast, Kvyat revealed that it all felt like a stab in the back at the time. He said:
“I felt really betrayed at that moment. It was a stab in the back and that’s life, you get stabbed in the back sometimes you know, it’s normal. Now it’s the past. I have another good career in racing so part of me of course is very thankful to Red Bull. The other part of me is still very unhappy with it.”
A Ferrari offer was on the table for the Red Bull driver
Kvyat also revealed that a Ferrari offer to replace Kimi Raikkonen was something that he had declined to stick with Red Bull and hence the swap fell all the more painful.
He said:
"I was performing really well. And I just scored another podium for the team [at the 2016 Chinese Grand Prix] and then, at the time I had also a proposal to race for Ferrari to replace Kimi. That was going on behind the curtain."
He added:
"So it was a very difficult situation also for me mentally to go back from being wanted by Ferrari and having seen the contract and then you go back to Toro Rosso suddenly and then you’re like, it’s not going very well suddenly."
Looking at how the career unraveled, it's hard to say that the decision was the wrong one. Verstappen has gone from strength to strength since 2016 and has become a force to be reckoned with.
Not only that, he's become the benchmark in F1. Kvyat, however, was unable to recover from the blow of being replaced midseason. He was never able to recapture the touch that made him so competitive as he ended up dropping out of F1 completely.
