Briatore slams Red Bull

Flavio Briatore is the former Renault team boss and current manager of Red Bull driver Mark Webber.

The 62-year-old Italian businessman has always been a colourful character around the Formula One paddock, but has seen his involvement in the sport diminish since the race fixing scandal following the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix.

Nelson Piquet Jr’s crash in that race helped team-mate Fernando Alonso to an unlikely victory due to the timing of the crash and the subsequent safety car period.

Briatore was accused of ordering the crash and he was initially banned by the FIA from all of their sporting formulas, a decision that was later overturned and an out of court settlement was reached.

While Briatore hasn’t returned to Formula One, he does continue to manage Australian Mark Webber and unsurprisingly as someone who has never been shy in airing his opinion, the Italian has voiced his own view on the controversy surrounding Webber, his team-mate Sebastian Vettel and the Red Bull team.

‘There’s no relationship [between the drivers] any more. It was already very formal between the two – that was very clear last year. But I don’t think the relationship can be fixed.’ he told RAI Radio as quoted by the BBC.

‘Sepang was proof no-one is in charge at Red Bull. Vettel is the boss there. You can’t have a team manager also doing the driving.

When asked if he thought that either Webber or Vettel would leave the team at the end of the season he said: ‘That’s for sure.’

The BBC have put together an excellent video documenting all the on track issues that Vettel and Webber have had over the years, to view this video: click here.