Red Bull team boss Christian Horner has revealed the infamous ‘Multi-21’ incident at the 2013 Malaysian Grand Prix was a result of Sebastian Vettel seeking revenge on then-teammate Mark Webber.
Cruising to a 1-2 finish at Sepang, the order was given for the two drivers to maintain position with 10 laps to go with the Australian (car No.2) ahead of the German (car No.1), however, the latter would ignore the instruction and went on to pass Webber after a close fight to take the win.
Ever since many have assumed it was simply a case of Vettel showing a ruthless side by ignoring a team order and asserting himself as the lead driver, now though, Horner admits it dates back to another moment of confrontation between the duo.
“Sebastian was fighting Alonso for the championship and Mark squeezed him up against the pit wall in Brazil in the championship decider,” he told Formula 1’s “Beyond the Grid” podcast, referring to 2012.
“That ultimately resulted in (Vettel) getting turned around by Bruno Senna. Sebastian was hugely angry about that. There was a hangover of that that led into Malaysia. Literally two races later, split by about four months.
“So then you’ve got a situation where Mark’s in the car ahead, Sebastian on new tyres in the car behind. The tyres were pretty fragile, we’re telling them ‘right, hold position’ and Sebastian thought ‘f*** you.’”
It wasn’t until the next race in China that Vettel revealed exactly why he decided to ignore the order, with Horner saying it was “one hundred percent” about payback for the perceived injustice at Interlagos.
Incredibly though, the Briton then revealed the whole saga led to a very interesting conversation in the most unlikely of places.
“I’d been invited to a lunch hosted by The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh,” he said. “I expected there to be about 200 people at, and there turned out to be 10 of us there.
“I had this bizarre situation of having to deal with the drivers, and then go to lunch with the Queen and Prince Philip and explain to her what a ‘Multi-21’ was and why our Australian driver was particularly grumpy with our German driver!
“I had that conversation over lunch with the Queen! She seemed to show great interest in it and likened it to horse racing and Prince Philip was incredibly interested as well because he was enquiring whether we could have a look at one of his carriages (to make it go faster).
“It was a most bizarre situation.”
