Daniel Ricciardo

Guenther Steiner believes the FIA needs to ban an owner having multiple F1 teams – as Red Bull do – after Daniel Ricciardo snatched the fastest lap from Lando Norris in Singapore.

It was a dominant Singapore GP display from title hopeful Norris who won by just short of 21 seconds over Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, but he was denied the perfect 26-point haul by Ricciardo, who in his final race for VCARB, signed off by setting the fastest lap, meaning Norris reduced Verstappen’s Championship lead to 52 points rather than 51.

Guenther Steiner wants Red Bull model banished from F1

With Red Bull also owning the VCARB team, ex-Haas boss Steiner – formerly Red Bull’s technical operations director – said “suspicion” is natural on any potential collaboration having taken place there, as he called Ricciardo’s fastest lap steal “a little bit weird”.

And in Steiner’s opinion, governing body the FIA must move to stop an owner from having more than one F1 team, and begin talks with Red Bull about their model.

“This fastest lap, it was a little bit weird when it came you know,” said Steiner on the Red Flags podcast.

“I think that the issue there is that in a sport like Formula 1, no owner should have two teams. You never get away from the suspicion that there is team orders between teams, not in one team, between teams.

“I guess we have to respect what Red Bull did at the time, because I was involved in it when they bought Minardi, Mr. Mateschitz. F1 was struggling. Minardi was struggling. They would have gone away without a saviour.

“So F1 has developed a lot since them days, and for the future, maybe there needs to be a fix to this one that nobody can own two teams.

“But I think it shouldn’t be as radical as saying, ‘Oh, in the next Concorde Agreement or commercial agreement, this needs to be sorted’. No. What Red Bull put into F1 to make it what it is now, it’s quite amazing, so in the end, you cannot tell them what to do with their teams.

“But in the future, there needs to be thoughts about that. How can we avoid this? Because if Visa Cash App [RB] wasn’t owned by the same owner as Red Bull, nobody would have had the suspicion. Everybody would have said it’s the last hooray from Daniel Ricciardo.

“If, for example, the Sauber would have made the fastest lap, would anybody be worried about it? No.

“So the problem lies, in that one, that it’s owned by the same owners.”

Steiner continued: “Zak Brown from McLaren is very pushy on that subject. But I do not think they can sort it out for the next term commercial agreement, which starts in ’26, but the next one, that should keep the FIA busy to find an agreement with Red Bull, to say, ‘Hey, you need to let it go in the next agreement’, which is then ’31.

“But work now towards that, and not just start a year before the new agreement is signed. You need to start to talk about it now.”

Red Bull senior advisor Helmut Marko referred to Ricciardo’s fastest lap as “the worthy farewell performance”.