Horner on how he improved Webber/Vettel dynamic

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Sebastian Vettel Mark Webber

Christian Horner took Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber to Great Ormond Street Hospital after the pair clashed in 2010 to put things into perspective.

The 2010 season was the Red Bull pair’s second season as team-mates, and with them fighting for the title, the relationship between them began to become strained.

The issue boiled over in Istanbul when the two crashed, causing Vettel to retire and the team to lose out on the victory.

After that race, Horner took them both to Great Ormond Street children’s hospital to put things into perspective.

“We had Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel, relatively early on in their relationship, were starting to get pretty feisty with each other,” he said on the High Performance Podcast.

“You could see the tension was building and building and then we had a problem where the two of them crashed into each other and that just took it to a whole new level.

“And I thought ‘I need to deflate this, I need to put this into perspective.’ At the end of the day, we’re not saving lives, we’re a sport that’s for entertainment.

“So I got both drivers and I took them, with David Coulthard actually, to Great Ormond Street to meet some of the kids that were having a tough time and also, importantly, the parents.

“To spend a morning there with those kids and parents and some of the heartache… That was real-life issues, and it just demonstrated that, okay, we’ve got it pretty good and [compared to] these challenges that these poor children and parents have, what we do is nothing.”

Mark Webber Sebastian Vettel
Mark Webber Sebastian Vettel

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After that, he felt while there were still some issues such as the infamous Multi-21 in Malaysia three years later, the pair respected one another more.

In fact, he didn’t even feel the need to sit them down together and have some words after the visit.

“I didn’t need to, at that point,” he added.

“They obviously spent time that morning with the kids and the parents and it was self-explanatory what was going on and I think after that we then had a period where there was reasonable respect between the two of them.

“It boiled over at some points but when you’ve got competitive animals, that’s what happens, but it was a good reminder at that point in time.”

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