Mark Webber’s Sebastian Vettel reveal after infamous Red Bull ‘Multi-21’ saga

Mark Webber has revealed that former Red Bull team-mate Sebastian Vettel had apologised to him on the podium, in the aftermath of their infamous ‘Multi-21’ team orders saga at Sepang in 2013.

‘Multi-21’ was Red Bull ‘s covert code for the team ordering their cars to hold station at the time, with Car 2 [Webber] meant to stay ahead of Car 1 [Vettel], but the German defied those requests by launching an attack for the lead of the Malaysian Grand Prix.

Mark Webber reveals Sebastian Vettel apology for ‘Multi-21’ race

Team principal Christian Horner took to Vettel’s team radio at the time to try and calm the situation, saying: “This is silly, Seb, come on,” as he looked to take the lead from the Australian, while Webber responded sarcastically by adding: “Yeah, that’s good teamwork,” before being informed that Vettel had already been told to stay in position.

The then-three-time World Champion did eventually find a way past, though, taking a race victory that led to awkward scenes in the post-race cooldown room that was caught on camera, Webber questioning his team-mate by repeating the ‘Multi-21’ order as Vettel stayed quiet.

On the podium, while being interviewed by Martin Brundle, Webber added: “In the end, Seb made his own decisions today and will have protection as usual, and that’s the way it goes.”

Vettel appeared remorseful in the media pen, but the former Red Bull driver explained that his team-mate had offered an apology to him in the aftermath of their 1-2 finish, albeit not in the order the team had requested.

Webber and Vettel endured a famously increasingly tense rivalry as Red Bull team-mates, which has since become a warmer relationship as time has passed, but in that moment, ‘Aussie Grit’ explained that the “fighter mode” drivers have when the helmet goes on appeared to take hold of Vettel.

“Seb apologised on the podium, which is easy to do, isn’t it?” Webber revealed on the Formula For Success podcast.

“So I think at the time, his instinct, helmet on, we’ve all been there where sometimes the helmet, when it’s on, you just go into… you are in fighter mode, and you want to get the bloody job done for yourself – and the selfishness actually does have a big chance of rolling into your performance and executing the race.

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“So in that one, bizarrely, we were on the ropes. Massively on the ropes. We did long runs in P3 or we thought we couldn’t beat Mercedes fair and square.

“They were very, very quick and, ultimately, as the race went on, I gave the early stops to Seb to protect it, ironically, against Lewis [Hamilton], because Seb was under pressure from him.

“And once we got ourselves away from the stops and sort of unlocked ourselves away from being undercut from those guys, the race could settle down.

“And that’s where we had the disagreement, because before the race, it was set that that’s how we were going to finish the Grand Prix.

“I mean, of course, Seb did his own thing and went against what the team thought.”

Addressing podcast host and former Red Bull team-mate David Coulthard, who drove alongside Mika Hakkinen in his title-winning years at McLaren, Webber added: “You’ve probably been there too, DC, where it’s like, ‘well, the drivers do something different on the day, even though the team’s had beautiful intentions. But s***, here we go.’”

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