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Battles between teammates are nice to watch, until they hit each other..

Battles between teammates are nice to watch, until they hit each other..

04-04-2020 13:09 Last update: 13:32

GPblog.com

Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc in Brazil 2019, Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo in Baku 2018. Clashes between teammates don't happen often, but when they do, they end up off the track often enough. With the arrival of radio communications, team orders have often been used to prevent a crash between teammates. Still, things don't always go well between teammates. Here a top 5 of the best clashes between teammates.

5. Alain Prost and Aryton Senna

It was the race in Suzuka, Japan, that had to determine the champion of the year in 1989. Prost and Senna were the only two drivers who still had a chance and both drivers of McLaren were eager to win. Prost was initially in the lead, but Senna's overtaking should have changed that. The two drivers bumped into each other, causing Prost to drop out and Senna to receive a questionable disqualification. 

4. Esteban Ocon and Sergio Perez

In 2018 these two drivers met each other often enough on the track. This is also the case in Singapore during the first lap. Ocon thought it was possible to overtake his teammate outside, but Perez steered in on the back of the Frenchman, leaving Ocon in the wall and out of the race. This wasn't the first collision between the two drivers, as things had already gone wrong in Belgium. On the way to Eau Rouge, Ocon slashed Perez's rear tyre, causing both Racing Point's drivers to fall back and put each other in danger.

3. Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo

This clash should not be missing from the list either. Verstappen and Ricciardo often respected each other on the track, but a couple of times things didn't go quite right either. In 2017 the two drivers of Red Bull Racing met in Hungary during the opening lap, which Ricciardo was far from happy with. In 2018 in Baku things didn't go well again, when the Australian hit the back of the Dutchman during an overtaking attempt, leaving them both out of the race. According to Ricciardo, the tensions that arose within the team as a result of that crash were one of the reasons he left the team for Renault.

2. Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc

The second place on this list is for the current drivers of Ferrari. The two managed to avoid each other at the beginning of 2019, because Vettel simply had more experience with the Ferrari car, but towards the end of the year Leclerc came closer and closer, resulting in more battles on the track. This escalated in Brazil in 2019, when the two drivers hit each other lightly in the final phase of the race, which meant that both drivers had to put the car alongside the track in a spectacular way. Who knows, we might see more of this kind of battle in 2020.

1. Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton

The friendship from karting changed when they had to fight together in the team for the world championship. The scenes in 2015, when Rosberg threw a cap at Hamilton in Austin, are symbolic of how bitter the relationship between the two drivers got. Often, the two Mercedes drivers got into fierce battles with each other on the track and this ended several times in a crash. A collision that almost everyone remembers is that of Spain in 2016. Hamilton thought to overtake Rosberg towards turn 4, but Rosberg pushed Hamilton off the track, causing the Brit to lose control. This battle in 2016 continued until the end of the season, in which Rosberg won the title, before announcing his farewell to F1.