Niki Lauda, David Coulthard defend Red Bull Racing over team orders in British GP – Formula 1 news
Former Formula 1 world champion Niki Lauda and former McLaren driver David Coulthard have recently defended Red Bull Racing as they were being criticised for using team orders during the 2011 British Grand Prix this past weekend.
Coulthard and Lauda claim that the team did the right thing and that there was nothing wrong with that order.
“I can perfectly understand Horner making that call over the radio, simply because he was worried about his two cars. That's fine by me,” said Lauda.
Coulthard echoed the former world champion’s statement later on and stated that they cannot expect teams to risk their championship chances like that.
“You cannot expect teams who have sponsorship contracts worth millions to risk throwing away valuable points at that late stage of the race,” he said.
Red Bull recently used team orders to ask Mark Webber to slow down behind Sebastian Vettel during the last couple of laps of the race as he was constantly challenging the current championship leader for the 2nd place.
However, the Australian driver did not listen to his team and kept challenging the reigning world champion for the track position but in the end failed to overtake him.
The team was criticised for this order as Webber is currently in 2nd place in the drivers’ standings and since he is a potential challenger for the championship, he has the right to challenge his teammate to any extent on the track.
Other than that, another reason for this criticism is that Vettel is leading the championship very comfortably and handing points to him like that just to increase his lead is not right at all.
Another former world champion Damon Hill stated when a driver is asked not to overtake, that is quite serious for him. He said racing drivers are meant to overtake and when one is in a championship winning car, these sorts of team orders also affect the
relationship between the team and the driver negatively.
Let’s see how both the Red Bull drivers fare at the upcoming German Grand Prix of the 2011 Formula 1 season.
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