After the 2010 season gets over, people will probably look back at the Turkish Grand Prix as the point where the game changed. If you want a more pinpoint moment, how about Lap 40 when Sebastien Vettel and Mark Webber clashed for the lead and ended up gifting 43 points on a platter to the fast-catching McLaren cars. Since then Red Bull Racing has gone on a damage control mode, making it known that they want the drivers to forgive and forget before they get on the plane to Canada for the next race.

However that is easier said than done. This particular race’s incidents has fueled speculation that the Red Bull garage isn’t as neutral a place as it was earlier made out to be. The official line of the team remains that both drivers were at fault in the on-track clash, but team principal Christian Horner and young drivers’ program chief Helmut Marko have inclined a bit towards blaming Mark Webber for the incident. The two have not spoken in forthright terms in this regard but have indicated that they expected Webber to move over because Vettel had his nose ahead when approaching Turn 12. It was even evident in TV replays that Horner, on the pit wall, was pining for one of the drivers to give more space to the other and it is anybody’s guess who that might be.

The question that arises now though is this: Vettel didn’t have a clear advantage over Webber going into turn, so what is their basis of forming such a judgment?

The answer to this lies in the fuel the two cars were carrying at that stage. Horner stated, after the two drivers’ debrief, that Vettel had one lap more worth of fuel than Webber and could still run his car at his prevalent race pace, while the Aussie was in conserve mode as he had used more in the initial stages of the race. Vettel achieved this while trailing Lewis Hamilton earlier in the race while Webber had to drive the wheels off his car to keep ahead of the McLaren.

In effect, this also explains why Vettel seemed to be gaining on Webber in the build up to the incident. Also, Marko says that both drivers were made aware of the situation and Vettel had to make a move when he did, for he would have lost performance in terms of fuel from Lap 41 onwards. In other words, Webber was told that he had lesser revs available than his team mate ahead of the clash and still decided not to yield easily to him.

Does that mean Mark Webber couldn’t understand the disguised ‘team order’ to let Vettel pass? Or after the mistake he made to let his younger mate through earlier in Malaysia, he wasn’t going to let him go through easily any which ways? The true story of the fuel levels and revs available to the two drivers is known only to the team and no one else. But the underlying point is this: with a car that is capable of winning the championship, Webber has put Vettel under pressure with his recent performances and this was an important race for the German to get back. Clearly the camaraderie within the team will be affected by this incident and from here on, it will be interesting to watch if Red Bull will be able to keep things calm and surge ahead like they did in the first part of the season, or will everything fall apart for a team that is not used to these high pressure situations. Furthermore if the situation doesn’t deflate between Vettel and Webber, or explodes again later on in the season, will the Aussie still be in his present team, come 2011?

The fuel level story affected another team in the race but got overshadowed by the Red Bull fiasco, and also because they benefited with their opponents’ slip-up and kept their heads to get a 1-2 result. After the Red Bulls went out of contention for the win, the McLaren pit wall relayed a disguised ‘team order’ of their own for Lewis Hamilton to save fuel and told him that Jenson Button behind would be doing the same. However, Button soon tried a move on his younger team mate which was repelled, but highlighted a second time in the race when team directions had been ignored. That the two McLarens made out of the scrap without hassles is reflective of the respect and space their two drivers still give each other. Perhaps that will also change in the near future if the Woking team will carry its momentum forward, and indeed challenge the Red Bulls for the championships from here on.