Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko has taken a not-so-subtle swipe at former driver Daniel Ricciardo, when explaining his team's decision to dump Alex Albon for the 2021 season.
Albon has been axed as Max Verstappen's teammate, and replaced by experienced Mexican Sergio Perez, who won his first race at the Sakhir Grand Prix, breaking the record for the most race starts before a maiden victory.
Albon struggled alongside Verstappen this season, as did Pierre Gasly in 2019.
"All the reports and the unsatisfactory results unsettled him (Albon)," Marko told motorsport-total.com.
"His deficit on Verstappen widened over the course of the season, not decreased. Admittedly (it was) marginal, but it got bigger.
"But if you have a teammate who drives at the absolute top level, no matter what the car is, that plays a subordinate role.
"If you look at it that way, no one except Ricciardo has existed on the same level as Max. And the longer the combination Ricciardo and Max was, the clearer Max was able to set himself apart."
In 2018, Ricciardo's last season at Red Bull, he scored just two podiums, albeit both race wins, and 170 championship points, well and truly eclipsed by Verstappen's 10 podiums and 249 points.
When Ricciardo announced his decision to leave Red Bull and join Renault for the 2019 season, Red Bull boss Christian Horner put the boot into the Aussie, suggesting he was scared of Verstappen.
"My assumption is that he is running from a fight," Horner told the Netflix documentary, Drive to Survive.
In an interview with EFTM prior to the 2019 season, Ricciardo denied his move was in response to the threat from Verstappen.
"Everyone has an opinion. That hasn't been pulled out of nowhere," he said.
"It is what is – I obviously say no, not true. I love a good fight.
"It was more about me than Max. It was about me, a lot of reasons."
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