Red Bull keeps profits on young driver scheme after racist comment
Estonian driver Juri Vips has been retained as Red Bull’s junior driver, despite being fired from his role as test and reserve driver for the team afterwards. Racism erupts online. Team Principal Christian Horner confirmed today that Red Bull is keeping Vips on his roster as he moves on his formula 2 campaign with Hitech.
Red Bull has opened an investigation into the behavior of Vips after the 21-year-old was caught using racial slurs while streaming a gaming session. Immediately after the incident, he was suspended by Red Bull pending an investigation into his actions.
After the investigation ended, the Milton Keynes-based team announced he was retiring from his test-drive and reserve-drive duties. This notice is followed by a ‘surprising’ move from the Vips team ‘F2, Hitech GPsaid he will be allowed to keep his seat for the rest of the Formula 2 season.
The current, Report of Sports Illustrated that Red Bull has allowed Vips to continue with his youth driver program while he competes in the remaining eight races of the 2022 season. According to Sports Illustrated:
“PA news agency was the first to report. In an interview with the outlet, Red Bull team boss Christian Horner said, ‘We have canceled the deal with him and that will certainly give him time to think.
“’Every person at some point deserves a second chance, if they can show that they have actually learned from their mistakes. He is a young man, a child, and we will support him – even after he has terminated his contract – from a mental health and educational perspective. Hopefully he will learn from the experience’. “
A spot in Red Bull’s youth driver program is a hot ticket, and I’m sure there will be drivers lining up to fill the void if the team lets Vips go.
In the past, the training program helped the present F1 World Champion Max Verstappen on the grid, as well as Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz, McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo and both current Alpha Tauri drivers.
The decision not to remove Vips from the show was a strange one. When the team removed Vips from his experimental role, they said it worked.”does not tolerate any form of racism. ”
This begs the question, why would it want to keep its relationship with a driver it had previously distanced itself from?