Red Bull F1, puppet masters of Torro Rosso, gave Brendon Hartley a final bitch slap of a half-hearted thank you for his contribution to Torro Rosso. Brendon Hartley is an example of a driver who was chewed up and spat out by the company’s driver system. That Red Bull, vis-a-vie, Torro Rosso management replaced him with a driver that is statistically worse is an insult enough. But the half-hearted and rather late thankyou was the ultimate bitch slap of insults.

Hartley was fired by Red Bull, vis-a-vie Torro Rosso, for not accumulating enough points during 2018. And fair enough that is Red Bull’s (vis-a-vie Torro Rosso) right to do so. After all Hartley may well have cost the team a couple of millions in prize money. But replacing Hartley with Daniil Kvyat who is statistically worse doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t make any sense because Red Bull always relies on analysis and number crunching to make decisions. Even for a latte. Gut instinct isn’t the Red Bull (vis-a-vie Torro Rosso) way. New engine partners, Honda, were exemplary in their conduct, they went out of their way to thank the Kiwi driver. Honda technical director Toyoharu Tanabe recently said of Hartley; “He was very strong on the engineering side, always giving very precise and useful feedback, based on his great experience working with hybrid power units and as a double world champion and Le Mans winner in LMP1. “That feedback accelerated our development in terms of set-up work, which helped us progress over the course of the year. “Thank you Brendon, and we wish you all the very best for the future.” We’re not in the Hartley camp, we favour no particular driver, but Honda’s conduct in all this is a demonstration of how you do management. With humanity and humility. Initially Red Bull (vis-a-vie Torro Rosso) couldn’t even do that. One can only conjecture that to Red Bull (vis-a-vie Torro Rosso) Brendon Hartley was a mass murder. But his fate at Torro Rosso must have felt like being on death row. So finally after Honda’s gentlemanly conduct Red Bull (vis-a-vie Torro Rosso) issued a thank you. The thank you had been missing for days after Red Bull (vis-a-vie Torro Rosso) announced it’s new driver lineup. Their conduct has been appalling even at a very basic man-management level.  

---