Top 20 moments of 2013, #6: Multi 21
Motorsport.com continues to count down the top 20 moments from this racing season, and number six is the Multi 21 debacle at Red Bull Racing.
Team orders will always be present in auto racing, but this year’s ‘Multi 21’ order in Sepang showed the masses that drivers don’t always follow their team’s wishes.
The Red Bull Racing machine was far from the dominant car on the grid by the second round, but after Fernando Alonso retired, the Red Bull Racing duo of Sebastien Vettel and Mark Webber found themselves in second and first respectively.
As the race wound down, the drivers maintained their gap to the rest of the field, and with only a handful of laps remaining Christian Horner radioed to the drivers, ‘Multi 21,’ which was the team asking the drivers to finish the race in the position they currently held.
Unfortunately, this was not the way the eventual World Champion wanted to see the outcome of the race.
He battled with Webber for a handful of laps, trading the inside and outside lanes in a quarrel that brought the fans to their feet.
As the battle went on, Webber got the short end of the stick as the aggressive Vettel finally got past his teammate.
While the news was not yet clear that the team had asked for Webber to win with Vettel in second, as soon as he climbed from the car the Australian made everyone aware of the situation.
He sat back in parce ferme and with the worldwide feed watching him like a hawk, he repeated ‘Multi 21’ twice, with a look of disgust and confusion.
"I apologized to the team straight afterwards for putting myself above the team, which I didn't mean to do. There's not really much more to say,” Vettel said in a sponsor interview after the race. "I don't apologize for winning, I think that's why people employed me in the first place and why I'm here. I love racing and that's what I do."
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