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Horner reveals why Vettel ignored Multi-21 order that ruined Webber relationship

Horner reveals why Vettel ignored Multi-21 order that ruined Webber relationship

31-12-2018 13:20 Last update: 01-01-2019 01:17
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Cast your minds back to 2013, Malaysia. Red Bull were the dominant force, with Sebastian Vettel having won the previous three driver titles and the team the previous three constructor titles.

It’s the second race of the season and Mark Webber is leading from team mate Vettel when the call comes over the radio: “Multi 21”.

This means that car 2, Webber should remain in front of car 1, Vettel until the end of the race. However, it didn’t quite pan out like that, with the German fighting his way into the lead and eventually winning the race.

And now Red Bull team boss Christian Horner has revealed why the now Ferrari driver did it.

On F1’s ‘Beyond the Grid’ podcast, Horner said: "It probably culminated at the end of 2012 when Sebastian was fighting [Fernando] Alonso for the championship.

"Mark squeezed him up against the wall on the start of the race in Brazil in the championship decider that ultimately resulted in him getting turned around by Bruno Senna and blah, blah, blah.

"Sebastian was hugely angry about that, because we'd discussed it before the race that Mark wasn't in the championship. It was 'do everything possible to support your team-mate' and that day he chose - instinct kicked in - it was probably totally foreign to him to think 'I don't want to support this guy'.

"But then there was a hangover of that that led into Malaysia, literally two races later, split by about five months.

"So then you've got a situation where you've got Mark in the car ahead, Sebastian on new tyres in the car behind. Tyres were pretty fragile, we're telling them 'Right, hold position'.

"Sebastian thought 'fuck you'."

Asked if it was payback for Interlagos, Horner replied: "100 per cent, 100 per cent. He told him that after the race when they sat down in China, so that was probably about as tense as it could get."