Red Bull, the chief beneficiaries of Mercedes’s poor reliability this year,
are waiting to pounce should the Silver Arrows fail again. Despite this, the
world champions elected not to enforce team orders to allow Daniel Ricciardo
– the only man with an outside shot of snatching the championship from
Mercedes – past Sebastian Vettel into second place.
Christian Horner, the team principal, defended the decision. “It would be
wrong to interfere with that given the situation we are in,” he said. “We
let them race as you saw.
“Daniel knew before the race – some time ago in fact – that that would be the
case. If there was a realistic chance of Daniel winning and Sebastian was
mathematically out of the championship then of course we would do the best
we can for the team. But the situation we are in at the moment, it’s a
long-shot.”