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Max Verstappen got a rough deal from F1 fans as he benefited from team orders in the Spanish GP. Red Bull used team orders to allow Verstappen to pass teammate Sergio Perez — the only driver he was fighting with for the win.
While there was reasonable sympathy for Perez as he gave away his shot at victory, there was also this inherent criticism that Red Bull should not be applying team orders as early as in the sixth race of the season. Having said that, the way Red Bull approached everything in Barcelona is one of the more logical ways to approach a situation like this. In this piece, we discuss why the team was completely justified in applying team orders at that point in the race.
A battle between teammates was an unnecessary risk
Sergio Perez was leading the race while Max Verstappen was behind and lapping at a much faster pace. Verstappen was able to close down a gap of 6 seconds between the two drivers in a span of 3 laps on tires that were 7 laps fresher than Perez.
Now, if Verstappen's DRS was working fine, he would have sailed past Perez anyway. Since it was failing intermittently, however, he was going to get stuck behind Perez and would have to look at other riskier alternatives to pass the Mexican.
Such risky moves could have resulted in both drivers eating into the optimal strategy for each other and bringing George Russell into the equation. Not only that, it would have increased the chances of a collision, especially with the stakes being this high (remember Baku 2018?). Risking a 1-2 finish in a race where Red Bull had already faced far too many issues did not make any sense.
Max Verstappen has already lost points with multiple DNFs
The 2022 title battle is going to have one major unpredictable factor in reliability. We have already seen it affect Red Bull with two DNFs for Max Verstappen in Bahrain and Australia. It affected Charles Leclerc in the Spanish GP, as the Ferrari driver lost a certain race win and 25 points.
In a championship like this, every point that can be grabbed is important for the title contenders. If Leclerc can suffer a DNF in Spain, the same could happen again with Verstappen. In such a scenario, it makes perfect sense to help your lead driver score as many points as possible in every race.
By letting the two drivers fight, Red Bull would have been acting counterproductive to its interests, especially when the Dutchman needs every point he can have at this stage of the championship.
Max Verstappen has been the faster driver at Red Bull
Although much criticism can be levied on Max Verstappen, none of it can be that he is not fast enough. The Red Bull driver is arguably the best on the grid irrespective of which metric you want to look at. It is a point that gets proved emphatically, even within the team.
Verstappen leads Sergio Perez 5-1 in the qualifying head-to-head. In all the races where the Dutchman has finished, he's been ahead of Perez (well, he's been ahead of everyone as he has won all those races). When you hold such an advantage over your teammate, it obliges the team to maximize every point scoring opportunity for the lead driver.
Looking back at the race in Barcelona, even at the stage where Red Bull ordered Perez to let Verstappen pass, there is a very high probability that the latter would have done it regardless. Did Red Bull steal the win from Perez? No, they didn't. They just facilitated a result that almost seemed the most inevitable in a safer way. It was not the greatest of moments for Perez to look back at, but at the moment, that was the right thing to do.
