Kvyat Out & Verstappen In As Big Change Comes In At Red Bull

 

A very sudden announcement in the Formula One world was announced this morning, with Red Bull Racing confirming that Daniil Kvyat has been dropped from the team with immediate effect and replaced by Toro Rosso’s protégé Max Verstappen. This change will be in effect from the Spanish Grand Prix onwards for the foreseeable future this season.

There has been questions over Kvyat’s future since his double crash with Sebastian Vettel and his Red Bull team-mate, Daniel Ricciardo into turn 1 on the first lap at last weekend’s Russian Grand Prix, after which Vettel went on a radio tirade, which most of was bleeped out. After the race, Red Bull team boss, Christian Horner admitted that the crash completely screwed up their race and said Kvyat still needed to learn.

This is the second race in a row where Kvyat has come under fire with his aggressive driving. At the previous Grand Prix in China where, despite finishing in 3rd, Vettel criticised the Russian for a bold move into turn 1 on the first lap where he described him as a torpedo. Kvyat responded in a jovial manner responding to the 4-Time World Champion ‘We were racing!’ claiming that it’s about being the best racer.

Since the beginning of the season, many in the F1 circus have been labelling Verstappen as a future World Champion, but although the Dutchman is massively talented, but he’s only 18 years old, still. He’s got many years ahead of him. It feels to me that Helmut Marko has seen an opportunity to shoe-in one of the finest young talents into his senior team to ward off rival competitors.

It’s very well known that Mercedes & Ferrari have had their eyes on Verstappen since last summer, so this move has been done by Red Bull to attempt to improve their leverage when it, inevitably, comes to a bidding war when his Red Bull contract runs out at the end of 2017.

My view of this is that Kvyat has been made out as a scapegoat in this incident. It’s easy to forget that he outscored Ricciardo last season and recorded their best finish, 2nd in Hungary last year, and recorded their only podium so far this season too. This reaction was summed up by Jenson Button who tweeted “Really? One bad race and Kvyat’s dropped, what about the podium in the previous race? #ShortMemories. I respect Verstappen’s talents but he’s got time on his hands.”

Also I feel this move is putting too much pressure on Verstappen’s shoulders when he still has so much time to develop into a world-class driver, which he definitely has the ability to achieve. But this has the feeling of the Red Bull hierarchy trying to manoeuvre him into the senior team as quickly as they could and unfortunately Kvyat has been left out in the cold.

Hopefully Kvyat works his way back up to get another chance at Red Bull or another top team next season and that Verstappen rises to the challenge and continues his fantastic start to his career.