Ferrari act could see team order rule scrapped
Team orders are banned in Formula One.
Ferrari ordered Felipe Massa to let Fernando Alonso through and win the German Grand Prix. They broke the rules. Simple.
Ferrari were fined $100,000 for their actions, as Massa’s race engineer Rob Smedley was given the unenviable task of telling his driver to move aside, in a coded message, and allow Alonso past.
The Scuderia also face further sanctions as the matter has been referred to the World Motor Sport Council, and face the possibility of having the victory taken away or being thrown out of the world championship.
There is a call for the rule on team orders to be revised, and David Coulthard, as well as fellow BBC pundit Eddie Jordan have even said it should be scrapped.
“Formula One is a team sport. It is not a popular view but it is the truth. And because it is a team sport, the frankly ludicrous ban on team orders that everyone is getting so worked up about should be scrapped,” said Coulthard.
Formula One commercial rights holder Bernie Ecclestone echoed those thoughts when he said: “I must confess I would agree with anyone who thinks that.”
Ecclestone believes it should be up to the team principals to make the decisions. “We make people call it a team, we say it's got be a team,” he said. “All the cars have to be exactly the same, the drivers wear the same overalls, so everybody has to look like a team, a team of people that are racing. I believe what people do when they are inside the team, and how they run their team is up to them. That's my opinion.”
Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo has defended his team’s actions. “The polemics are of no interest to me,” he said. The Italian insists no individual is bigger than the team. “I simply reaffirm what I have always maintained, which is that our drivers are very well aware, and it is something they have to stick to, that if one races for Ferrari, then the interests of the team come before those of the individual.”
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner will be glad the spotlight is off his drivers, Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber, and he feels Formula One is the loser and Ferrari should not have done what they did. “The only losers today are Formula One. Ferrari are a big enough team that they shouldn't need to do that,” he said.
Horner has allowed his drivers to race one another this season, reaching boiling point at the Turkish Grand Prix where they collided. Many believed Horner should not have let his drivers race each other.
“We came in for a lot of criticism in Istanbul for allowing our drivers to race but I think that it's the fair and sporting thing to do. It's a great shame. Ferrari are a great team. It's a shame for Formula One that they didn't allow Felipe and Fernando to race each other. There are not so many points between them and it was so obvious how they moved the cars around. The biggest losers are the fans, the spectators, the viewers as a race win was handed to Fernando. Rightly or wrongly, we've allowed our drivers to race because we believe that's the sporting thing to do and it also is within the regulations,” Horner said.
Reigning world champion Jenson Button has said Ferrari must give both their drivers an equal chance of winning the world championship.
“Personally I think team orders in Formula One are wrong, in any motor sport category, although sometimes they are inevitable,” he said. “We all want to win, and I know that every team wants to win, both the constructors' and drivers' championships. But they have to give both their drivers the same opportunity to do so. This was very early in the season. How early is it going to start in the future?”
What was witnessed in Sunday’s race was not a shock, as Formula One has a history of performing such acts. Team orders were banned in 2002 because of Ferrari ordering Rubens Barrichello to let Michael Schumacher through in Austria, which angered fans, as Barrichello was quicker than Schumacher for the whole weekend and well ahead in the race. In 1982 Gilles Villeneuve and Didier Pironi in San Marino were ordered to slow down by Ferrari, with Villeneuve ahead, but when Pironi overtook him and won the race, he incurred the wrath of Villeneuve.
Schumacher agrees with the decision Ferrari made. “I have been criticised in the past for exactly that and I understand one hundred per cent and I would have done exactly the same if I were in their situation,” said the German.
The seven-time world champion was favoured during his time at Ferrari when Barrichello, Eddie Irvine and Massa were his teammates and he feels it was the right thing to do.
“I can see in the years that we did it, because we were leading so much, people thought it was unnecessary. I can agree on that in a way. But in principal I fully cannot. I agree with what's going on, you have to do it in a way that's maybe nice and not too obvious, but there's only one target and that's winning the championship,” he said.
In 2007 at the Brazilian Grand Prix, Kimi Räikkönen, then driving for Ferrari, needed to find a way past Massa to win the drivers’ championship, and after the second round of pitstops, Räikkönen was ahead of Massa. Clearly, team orders were in place. A year later, the roles were reversed, and Räikkönen deliberately slowed down to let Massa through at the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai.
Massa was the first driver heading into turn one at Hockenheim last Sunday, with Alonso behind him. Throughout the race, Massa and Alonso pushed each other, with Alonso only once being able to pick up the slipstream and attempt a manoeuvre. Ferrari say it was down to the drivers when Massa moved across after receiving the dreaded radio message.
While Massa deserved to win the race, Ferrari feel Alonso in the long run will have the best chance to win the world championship.
Formula One, no surprise, is once again embroiled in a scandal, but this could be one where it might benefit the sport in the future, with teams finally being allowed to do what they want to do.
A lift on the ban on team orders is the best solution.
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