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Max Verstappen insists Red Bull did not issue team orders at the end of the Malaysian Grand Prix, where he finished second behind teammate Daniel Ricciardo. The Red Bull pair were running second and third behind Lewis Hamilton in penultimate stint and had just engaged in a thrilling wheel-to-wheel battle, which had seen Ricciardo stay ahead. That turned out to be a decisive moment in the race as Hamilton's engine exploded a lap later, propelling the Red Bull drivers into first and second. Both men used the subsequent Virtual Safety Car period to pit on lap 41 and were running close when the race restarted, only for Verstappen to drop back in the final stages. Both men had been instructed to keep it clean to the end but Verstappen insists there was no call for him to hold station behind his teammate. "I was pushing," Verstappen insisted. "But also when you get very close, it overheats tyres and I was already on older tyres. It was very difficult to get into DRS and if you are on old tyres - with hard tyres I had a few laps advantage but on older tyres to get within a second is very hard." "For sure, the team said we were clean to race, but in a clean way - and that's what we did." In 2013 Red Bull also claimed a one-two finish at Sepang but in controversial circumstances, as Sebastian Vettel ignored a team order to pass Mark Webber -- the now-infamous 'Multi-21' call for car number one to finish behind car number two. Team boss Christian Horner insisted there was no repeat this time around and joked the drivers' current numbers (Ricciardo as No.3, Verstappen as No.33) made it unworkable anyway. "At no stage a Multi 21," Horner confirmed. "Different drivers, and different situation -- too many 3's in there anyway! "I made a decision after [Hamilton's failure], I instructed both engineers afterwards you're free to race but make sure we prioritise 43 points. Ask the drivers to respect that, and they did. From our perspective it was fine to allow them to do that. They were both in the same engine mode, both in the same state, so there was no real advantage one way or the other."
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