Your View: Should F1 get rid of its team order ban?
July 27, 2010 by SJ Skid
Filed under Prime & Option, Top Story
This is really the big, substantial question to come out of the German Grand Prix.
Ferrari punishment could affect the season standings, but that seems — seems, I stress — unlikely right now. Questions of what the team order controversy will do to Felipe Massa’s season, or even his career, have so many factors — human above all else — that it is hard to come to a solid conclusion.
But there is no denying that the race on Sunday has opened up one of Formula 1′s dirtier little “secrets”: Team orders are banned, but team orders exist.
And so the question being raised — by the likes of David Coulthard and Bernie Ecclestone — is whether it is time to do away with this rule. To rip back the veil, so to speak, and let what goes on go on.
Formula 1 is a team sport, after all. And as Bernie says:
“As far as I’m concerned a team is a team, and they should run it whichever way they want to run it.
“Nobody should interfere as to how they run their team.
“But of course if they do something that’s dangerous then obviously they’re going to be in trouble, otherwise get on with it.”
So, the big Your View for the week: Should F1 get rid of the ban on team orders?
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If everyone is doing it, then yes, do away with the rule. Also do away with the driver’s championship, as apparantly it’s not that important. Let me point out though, that as a certified F1 geek, I can name the WDC for almost every year since F1′s inception…I get those pesky Graham Hill and Jack Brabham seasons criss-crossed (no, not ‘Chris Cross’, Todd)…but if you ask me who won the constructor’s title two years ago, I’ll be at a loss.
I agree. The only people who have a vested interest in the “team” are the sponsors, and only so they can get better branding over a race weekend, and the teams themselves.
As far as I can tell “most” F1 fans follow a driver or have a pecking order of drivers they like. For example, as an Australian, I have followed Mark Webber’s career from his Formula 3 days and don’t really care who he drives for.
is F1 a team event? I think you’ll find the answer is no, otherwise there would be no driver’s title. Sure, the constructor’s title is important, but I agree with “Excepteuropa1″, that most fans follow drivers, rather than teams per se.
not only was Ferrari’s actions deplorable and unsporting.. imagine people who had laid real money on the table betting that Massa would win.. makes a mockery of the idea that F1 racing is a fair, even contest of men and machines.
so – I say NO to team orders.. and yes to real penalties for those teams who break them.. what about banning them for a race meeting or two?? $100,000 is nothing to an outfit who is spending many millions chasing driver’s and constructor titles.
yes
Team Orders should remain banned in my view – what Ferrari did was ruin the spectacle of the F1 race.
If they really must have a No.1 driver in their ranks, fine, I have no issue with that – give them the preferred strategy, first dips on new parts, etc. they could even be open about it to the public as having a “leader”, but once they’re ON THE TRACK, THEY RACE and what happens, happens, live with it.
Luca is full of cr@p talking about the “TEAM”, as many have pointed out, the team would have scored exactly the same number of points the way it was.
Why not ban the radios ?
A gold star for the man who thought of my idea first.
You obviously have more time on your hands F1 Kitteh. Well done.
The simple answer is YES.
The longer answer is a bit more subtle – As in it needs to be stated just what can be ordered and what can’t. For example teams have to nominate a preferred driver and live with it, not change their minds during a race as to who they favour. Or a team can order a driver to loose a position to his team mate only in certain, defined, circumstances by which I mean if a driver has an advantage of X points over his team mate in the WDC standings or it can only be done with a certain race distance remaining – i.e. if it’s in the last 15 laps you have to live with how it’s played out. These are just suggestions but I feel the FIA have to get the balance right between the interests of the business (i.e. teams) and the sport (i.e. each driver competing to win as much as he can) – after all, when the Ferraris were dominating in the early 2000s F1 did loose some of it’s charm because the “sport” went out of it a bit (I’m not having a bash at Ferrari for that, they were the best team and deserved to win, but the sport is better when 2,3,4 teams are in the running to win things, in my opinion).
yes
I think the ban should be lifted as well. Ferrari got caught doing and I’m sure everyone else does it too but they just go about it differently. My guess is that in other teams (besides Red Bull) the number 2 driver is aware of that distinction. Massa doesn’t have a chance at the drivers championship and Alonso (if he can keep it up) does. Massa also could have avoided the situation by keeping his 3 second gap but he could not keep it going, he was obviously struggling on those hard tires. I agree with the call because he keeps the team from looking stupid like Red Bull did when they had that incident where Vettle was faster but got into a wreck trying to pass Webber.
I don’t think that team orders should be allowed. It makes for more of an interesting race and we get to see who the real drivers are, who can overtake and who can’t. It makes more of a spectical race when we see two drivers overtake each other for the lead or even just in general. I say ‘no’ to fixed races!
Of course the ban on team orders should be lifted. This is a rule that is un-enforcable (well unless the teams make it blatantly obvious like Ferrari).
Sure, might as well. I would think that it is not always an easy choice for the team and it carries baggage that they must pay for and deal with. So leave it in the hands of the teams to run themselves to victory or into the ground.
Everybody does it. There is no frikin way to avoid secret codes. This rule is ridiculous. So yes.
Just because “everybody does it” doesn’t make it right… Letting my feelings speak, I’d say either keep the ban and enforce it sternly – points, exclusions etc – or lift the ban and ditch the driver’s championship. Team orders to interfere with race results are (almost) always given to manipulate the driver’s championship, after all, and if F1 was to be turned into a proper team competition, we probably wouldn’t see team orders like this weekend.
At its core, the rule is sound – banning any team orders that interfere (directly) with the race results, but leaving any other decisions up to the team. A team can openly state one driver as their #1 and give the other a supporting role, and can even ask the support driver to sit as a “cushion” between the #1 driver and the rivals. But they can’t force a driver to switch places, or ask him to crash to further the #1 driver’s chances…
NO.
The “everyone is doing it” is being thrown away by Ferrari fans now as an excuse.
Is not just about the rule, is about sport ethics. There are times that a team might give an order but is not really harmful to sport ethics.
A good example is the 2008 Hamilton-Kovi German GP. We don’t know if there was a team order and wasn’t Kovi by himself but lets say there was. Many Ferrari fans threw it here and even NC played smartass by putting the video but the reason there wasn’t such an outcry is simple. Massa still had a chance for the championship now and at 2008 Kovi wasn’t even racing Hamilton. Hamilton was fighting for the win and Kovi for 4th or 5th. Hamilton just found himself temporarily behind him because he just got out of the pits. There wasn’t even an issue of Lewis taking Kovi’s position. They were in a different race.
So you might say team orders but really we all knew that what we call SPORTING DECENCY was NOT really violated.
That’s the concept Ferrari and her fans seem to miss.
VIEWERS ARE NOT IDIOTS. If Alonso was fighting with Vettel for 1st and pitted while being 1st and got out behind Massa who was running 4th and Massa let him threw so he won’t lose time when Vettel pit’s, will there have been such a reaction? NO. It would have still been team orders but F1 fans would have understand that in such occasion NO sporting decency was really violated.
And THAT my friend NC and few others is what you just DON”T GET. That SPORTING DECENCY thing is just too much for you.
So i think a rule should be there but used only when “SPORTING DECENCY” is violated.
Right now i want Ferrari to get suction for this. But if they did the same in the last races with Massa having no hope i wouldn’t really want them to pay hard for it. Because some of us see that it’s according to how you do things. That’s exactly why there wasn’t an outcry when Ferrari did it in the last races with Raikkonen and Massa in 2007 and 2008.
But if we take the rule away completely then all we will see is Ferrari again shaming the sport and making fans look like idiots with out a second thought. If only they could keep there team orders inside that “sporting decency” barrier everything would have been better. But there “special” attitude makes them become shameless.
I can think of a dozen ways team orders will make the on track (and drivers champ) racing more dull. So how does team orders make it more exciting then? Until the benefits out weight the loss, then the ban should stay.
Keep the ban, I like living the lie. I was at Indy in 2002 for Michael’s version of make-up sex, and man it was f’ing irritating. Ferrari just needs to learn what the word sublety means. Maybe they could come up with other creative ways of letting their drivers know that it is time to switch places. Maybe something on the ECU where Luca can shut off your engine for a second or two, how about a flashing pit board that says ‘bend over’.