Red Bull Are Right to Replace Daniil Kvyat with Toro Rosso's Max Verstappen
To Daniil Kvyat, delirious after claiming the second podium finish of his Formula One career in the Chinese Grand Prix, it was only an innocent question.
Wiping his face as race winner Nico Rosberg and Sebastian Vettel—who had salvaged second place following an opening-lap collision with Ferrari team-mate Kimi Raikkonen—stood to his left, the Red Bull driver attempted to pierce the testosterone-filled silence with a little chitchat ahead of the podium ceremony.
"What happened at the start?" Kvyat chirped, as heard over the FOM television feed.
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"Onboard with Vettel & Kvyat at Turn 1.
— Sebastian Vettel (@FansOfSebVettel) April 18, 2016"
VET: I had the Red Bull coming on the inside like a mad man...#ChineseGP pic.twitter.com/PkVvHYRHki
"You! Asking what happened at the start! If I don't go to the left, you crash into us and we all three go out!" shouted an animated Vettel, referring to Kvyat's opportunistic overtaking manoeuvre at the first corner, which sparked the friendly fire at Ferrari.
"Well, I was..."
"No, no well!" Vettel interrupted. "You came like a torpedo!"
"Well, that's racing!" Kvyat responded with his arms outstretched, laughing in the face of the four-time world champion.
And so it continued, with Seb explaining why he was caught between a rock and a hard place at Turn 1 and Dany reminding the German that he has "only two eyes," shrugging his shoulders and wondering why his competitor was quite so upset with a second podium appearance in three races.
When it became obvious the Ferrari driver would not be receiving the apology he appeared to be seeking, the cool-down room quietened momentarily before Vettel, unzipping his red overalls, made one last remark.
"I know it's racing, but you need to expect when you attack like crazy and you damage the car. You were lucky this time."
At the time, as the lecture recommenced on the balcony of the Shanghai International Circuit, this was said to be Vettel at his most arrogant.
On a day Ferrari chairman Sergio Marchionne was in attendance—warning his team were running out of time to return to winning ways, per Sky Sports' James Galloway—he was embarrassed by his accident with Raikkonen and frustrated Rosberg had been gifted such an easy route to a third successive victory of 2016.
Nearly three weeks later, however, his comments feel strangely prophetic. Kvyat has now been demoted to the Toro Rosso feeder team and replaced by 18-year-old Max Verstappen just days after torpedoing Vettel twice in the space of two corners on a disastrous opening lap in the Russian Grand Prix.
It was almost as though Vettel, by far the most successful graduate of the same Red Bull junior program that guided Kvyat to a front-running seat at the beginning of 2015, had recognised a worrying—perhaps even fundamental—flaw in the Russian's driving on that first lap in China.
And while that aggression, that naivety, had served Kvyat well in Shanghai, it would not be long before it caused him more harm than good. It seemed his luck would soon evaporate and he would find himself causing a sizeable, potentially career-defining accident.
The very accident, in fact, we witnessed at the Sochi Autodrom.
From the moment he became a Red Bull driver, Kvyat's performances had varied wildly between the good and the bad, with plenty of ugliness in between—think his costly, unforced errors in qualifying at Suzuka and in wet conditions at the Circuit of the Americas.
Although he had been lauded for outscoring team-mate Daniel Ricciardo last season, Red Bull's patchy reliability record meant the final championship standings offered an inaccurate reflection of the differences between the drivers when the gulf was evident in their performances alone.
As noted by Motor Sport Magazine's Mark Hughes, Ricciardo was consistently superior in one-lap conditions, and there seemed to be little coincidence that most of Kvyat's best race results were achieved through good fortune and often came with a helping hand from the other car.
His fourth-place finish in Monaco, for instance—a career-best result at the time—was only achieved when Ricciardo slowed at the end of the final lap to return the position Kvyat had given him a few laps earlier. It was a gesture of sportsmanship and a free boost of confidence he would have received from few others on the grid.
His maiden podium in Hungary effectively fell into his lap after Ricciardo used his car as a battering ram, making contact with Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton at Turn 1 and clearing the way for Kvyat to finish second in a race he feared "was over" after an almighty lockup on the first lap, per ESPN F1's Nate Saunders.
And even though he was voted the winner of F1's new Driver of the Day award in Shanghai, his drive to third—on a day Ricciardo recovered from an early puncture to finish just seven seconds behind—was little more than a case of the driver with the fastest car with the least damage nestling behind a dominant Rosberg.
There are several other reasons behind the promotion of Verstappen, the most exciting talent to arrive in F1 for some time. He has been protected from the claws of Mercedes and Ferrari and will be afforded the time to settle at Red Bull ahead of a potential title challenge in 2017.
Per Hughes, his removal from an inter-team scrap with Carlos Sainz Jr. will also diffuse tensions at Toro Rosso, whose team principal, Franz Tost, had a "blazing row" with Verstappen and race engineer Xevi Pujolar—who has confirmed his departure from the team—after qualifying in Russia.
Yet the harsh nature of the decision—a hugely brave call when you consider it's much harder to drop a driver from the main Red Bull outfit than to eject the latest underperforming pretender from Toro Rosso—should not obscure the fact Kvyat had long since become the least convincing of the four Red Bull-backed drivers.
Recruited to Red Bull as an emergency replacement for the Ferrari-bound Vettel in late 2014, he looked increasingly like a junior driver being carried along by a championship-winning team.
And in an environment that demands excellence, constantly toeing the line between potential greatness and total disaster was never going to suffice.
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