Max Verstappen-Daniel Ricciardo Partnership Can Become Red Bull's Driving Force
Perhaps the biggest compliment you could pay Max Verstappen is that, for two-thirds of qualifying for the Spanish Grand Prix, he made the best driver in Formula One look average.
Over the opening four races of the 2016 season, Daniel Ricciardo had established himself as the outstanding performer on the grid, recapturing the understated speed and consistent class of his breakthrough year in 2014.
As he told MotorSport.com's Pablo Elizalde during winter testing, he entered his third season as a Red Bull driver reluctant to get his "hopes up with anything," but the sheer level of his performances had returned the belief, the momentum and the magic to a team recovering from its first winless campaign in seven years.
.jpg?w=256 "Colts Jaguars Football")
Fourth in Australia was the maximum result on a day considered decision-making was of paramount importance, and an identical finish in Bahrain—a circuit that should have exposed the limitations of his Renault-powered RB12—was a just reward for keeping a calm head when so many misplaced theirs.
China was one of those weekends where he was left to rue a "missed opportunity" despite taking "every opportunity" available. Yet his recovery from an early puncture to claim another P4—just seven seconds away from the podium—allowed him to celebrate "the equal best race" of his career, per MotorSport.com's Adam Cooper.
And he would have almost certainly maintained that run of form in Russia had it not been for Daniil Kvyat's self-destructive start to his home race, which saw the 22-year-old nudge Sebastian Vettel into his team-mate, hit the German for a second time at the following turn and ultimately cost himself a seat at Red Bull.
Although he was left to stagger to an 11th-place finish with a damaged car, there seemed to be little doubt that Ricciardo—even as Nico Rosberg maintained his 100 per cent winning record at the Sochi Autodrom—remained the most impressive pound-for-pound driver in the early weeks of 2016.
As the European leg of the season began on Saturday afternoon at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, however, he didn't look remotely like the best driver in F1.
He didn't even look like the best driver in his own team.
Recruited to Red Bull as an emergency replacement for Kvyat, Verstappen—not for the first time in his short career—challenged conventional F1 wisdom in Spain, single-handedly dismissing the long-held belief that drivers require time and patience to adapt to an unfamiliar environment and alien machinery.
Having impressed Christian Horner with his very first flying lap of Friday practice, as the team principal told Sky Sports' Pete Gill and Matt Morlidge, the boy wonder established an immediate advantage in qualifying, pipping Ricciardo to third place by 0.171 seconds in the first segment.
If the Australian was unnerved by his deficit to the newcomer in Q1, he would have been alarmed by the gap of 0.407 seconds at the end of Q2, when he was forced to return to the track to guarantee his place in the top-10 shootout, as Verstappen had the luxury of remaining in the garage, safe in the knowledge he had already done enough.
That extra lap in Q2 meant Ricciardo, with just one set of fresh soft-compound tyres available, was chained to the garage in the opening minutes of Q3 while Verstappen nestled his RB12 between the all-conquering Mercedes drivers following Lewis Hamilton's mistake at Turn 10, moving ever closer toward a surprise result.
But less than two years after hounding a certain four-time world champion out of Red Bull, Daniel was not prepared to let some whippersnapper arrive and instantly snatch the hearts and minds of the team.
His team.
And on his one and only lap of Q3, he found the lap time he had been searching for throughout qualifying to beat Max to third by the 0.407 seconds he lacked in Q2.
The symmetry of the Red Bull drivers beating each other by identical margins in consecutive segments offered an early indication the team, as Horner told Morlidge, now have "one of the, if not the, strongest" lineups on the current grid.
With Ricciardo ending qualifying just 0.4 seconds adrift of second-placed Rosberg, the battle of the bulls was proof that the most intense, evenly matched driver pairings in F1 enhance the overall performance of a team as well as providing both sides of the garage with valuable reference points.
"VES did a magnificent job & RIC's response demonstrates that RBR has truly formidable pairing. Engine upgrade can't come fast enough #F1
— Mark Gallagher (@_markgallagher) May 14, 2016"
Having spent his Red Bull career taking on first a lost, demotivated Vettel and then a Kvyat too wild and inconsistent to provide a worthwhile challenge, Ricciardo can now measure his performances alongside one of the brightest talents in the recent history of F1.
Likewise, Verstappen—now free from the rat race against Carlos Sainz Jr. at Toro Rosso—is now able to track his progress in direct combat with a driver who, on the evidence of qualifying, will continue to set new standards.
It was little wonder, then, that Helmut Marko—the head of Red Bull's junior-driver program, widely criticised for his harsh treatment of Kvyat—dropped his guard momentarily as Ricciardo crossed the line at the climax of Q3, allowing his normally stern-looking face to soften into a knowing smile as he watched from the garage.
This, as Motor Sport Magazine's Mark Hughes envisaged, really is "where the unstoppable object comes up against the immovable force."
And Red Bull will ultimately be the beneficiaries of F1's latest great rivalry.
.jpg?w=480 "Colts Jaguars Football")
