Both Red Bull drivers made excellent starts, but Verstappen found himself squeezed wide by Valtteri Bottas’ Mercedes on the exit of the opening corner.

Ricciardo, on the opposite side of the road, capitalised, overtaking Verstappen. But then as Verstappen tried to defend the inside into the next left hand corner, he found himself carrying too much speed and locked his brakes, cannoning into the side of his team-mate.

While Verstappen’s car was undamaged, Ricciardo was out of the race with a holed radiator.

“Someone hit me,” said Ricciardo on the team’s radio. “Was that who I think it was?"

"****ing sore loser!” was Ricciardo's reply when the team confirmed he had been hit ny his team-mate.

“There was never a pass there,” Ricciardo later told NBC. “It was just a mistake. There’s no way there was ever room, because Valtteri was covering the inside anyway.

"I couldn’t have done anything else. I was just on my line. Obviously he got the penalty and all that, and it’s obvious whose mistake it was, it doesn’t change my race.

“It was out of my hands, you’re never going to get that place back in Turn 2 the way it was. It’s just overambitious. That’s youth.”

“I would've liked to have raced today, and that didn’t need to be done.


“Obviously, the team will do their bit and I’ll do mine. Yeah, there shouldn’t be too much to say but sure we’ll sort it out.

“He doesn’t like when a team-mate gets in front of him. It was a very poor mistake... amateur, to say the least.

“I honestly don’t think it’s trying too hard or an excuse for it. It’s like he tried T1 outside, it didn’t work and he had the line taken from him. What looks a good start is a bad start, I go past and it’s ‘oops, I’ve got to fix it.'”

Verstappen accepted responsibility afterwards and said he would apologise to his team-mate.

"It was of course not what you want," Verstappen said. "I think everything started in Turn 1. The start was actually quite good but I got squeezed wide by Bottas and lost quite a lot of speed.

"We were both fighting for position in Turn 2 so we braked quite deep into the corner. I tried to keep it to the inside but then I just got locking, locking, and then I unfortunately touched Daniel on the weakest point of the car, in the side.

"It is never my intention to hit anyone, but especially not your team-mate, and especially with the relationship I have with Daniel – it's always really good and we can always have a laugh."

It was especially galling for Red Bull to have achieved such a spectacular goal at the circuit on which they expected to have front-running pace. Indeed, Ricciardo was dominant in practice, and Verstappen finished 10 seconds adrift of the winner even after serving a 10-second penalty for removing his team-mate from the race.