Last weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix was an instant classic. There is absolutely no denying that. It was one of the greatest races from any form of Motorsport that I have seen ever since I was first exposed to the bright and vivid colours of the Ferrari, McLaren, Williams and Jordan Formula One cars of 1997 whilst I was a young child. There was, however, one aspect of the race which seemed somewhat anticlimactic.
On lap 47 of the 70 lap race, a radio message was broadcast to Lewis Hamilton who brilliantly raced to the front in his Mercedes despite starting stone dead last. “Gap to [team mate] Nico [Rosberg] one second, he’s on the option tyre. He has one more stop so don’t hold him up.” This is not the sort of thing I want to hear, I want to hear “you are racing, go and race like crazy” because I like seeing team mates race in equal machinery. Hamilton chose not to slow down and let Rosberg through, and I agree with his decision, as it would have cost Hamilton too much time on track and arguably a very important position in the fight for the world title.
Now team orders have always been in Formula One, ever since the series began in 1950. It was not uncommon for a driver to be told to pit in so his team leader could take over after his own car expired, and claim an equal share of points for that particular car’s effort. In some cases, especially during very hot Grand Prix, this was quite common, and one champion – Juan Manuel Fangio claimed the title one year due to sharing drives with their respective team mates.
Eventually, this was outlawed, though team orders remained in place. Certain teams had a clear ‘number one’ driver, such as Jack Brabham at his own team and Jim Clark at Lotus. The other cars run by the team were somewhat less important than those of their team leaders, although they still had a lot of attention, but not usually all of the spare parts. A loss of a team leader can be catastrophic to a team; such was the case at Lotus in 1968, following Clark’s death. Team mate and fellow great Graham Hill grabbed the wounded team by the neck and wrestled their way to clinch both titles that year.
Although team orders have been ignored before, the first real time that team orders came to the limelight was during the 1982 San Marino Grand Prix, where Didier Pironi, running in second place to team mate and team leader Gilles Villeneuve ignored a team order which said ‘slower’. What this should have meant was cruise to the flag in formation, but Pironi overtook Villeneuve for the win. The Canadian was killed at the next event at Zolder. Another notable case was at the same circuit seven years later, this time with Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna, both at McLaren. This was when the once harmonious relationship between the two legendary drivers fell to pieces. There was a pre-race agreement between the two where whoever would lead into the first corner would not be challenged. Following a red flag period, which saw the race restarted, Senna pursued Prost and challenged him and overtook him for the win. Senna found a loophole within the agreement, as it never stated whether that would be the case in the event of a restart. It was the first of a massive chain of events between the two drivers that was nothing but war that year.
Having two top drivers at the same team can sometimes cost the team one or both titles. In 1986, despite a clear performance advantage, Nelson Piquet and Nigel Mansell, both at Williams, kept taking points off of each other, whilst Prost was supported by then-team mate Keke Rosberg. Prost snatched the title from the Williams drivers that year in the highly dramatic 1986 Australian Grand Prix.
Following a highly controversial application of team orders by McLaren in 1997 and in 1998, the former case being that Ron Dennis wanted two race winners at the team to boost team morale, the second being a case similar to the race at San Marino, team orders were certainly beginning to get disliked by Formula One fans, as it simply isn’t good for the show. This reached braking point when, in 2002, Ferrari ordered Rubens Barrichello to move over and give the race win to team leader Michael Schumacher. He done this on the very last lap of the race, and the reception was not a very warm one. Formula One was in shock at how Ferrari could stage a race finish like that. Team orders were later banned from Formula One, and everybody thought that was it.
There were two cases of ‘team orders’ during the period that it was banned. Once was during the 2007 Brazilian Grand Prix, where Felipe Massa handed the race win to Kimi Raikkonen to help him win the title, and in the 2008 Chinese Grand Prix where the same thing happened but roles were reversed. There was a case of team orders being blatantly ignored in 2007, where during qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix, at McLaren, Hamilton refused to let team mate Fernando Alonso through, and later Alonso retaliated by holding Hamilton up in the pits. This was another case of where having ‘two roosters in the same henhouse’ doesn’t always work, as McLaren lost both titles that year.
Once unusual case of team orders came in the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, where Renault deliberately made Nelson Piquet Jr crash, causing a safety car, to give Alonso a good chance of winning the race.
Despite those events, team orders weren’t really discussed once again until the 2010 German Grand Prix, where those famous words were broadcast to Felipe Massa and the world: “Fernando is faster than you. Can you confirm you understood the message?” This was clearly code for “let your team mate past”, and Massa obliged, denying the crowd and those watching on TV any chance of a great battle between Ferrari team mates. Following this, team orders were allowed in Formula One once again due to the fact that they cannot be policed, but they continue to be discussed to this day. With cases such as ‘Multi-21’ and ‘Kimi, get out of the ******* way!’ showing that team orders will always remain in this sport, I feel that as a purist there is a right and a wrong time for team orders.
If you have a case where two drivers are on the same strategy, unless one is mathematically unable to win the world championship, team orders should never be used, simple as. If you have a case where one driver is clearly all over the gearbox of his team mate whilst on fresh rubber, then I feel that team orders is acceptable, to maximise the result for the team, which is the most important thing at the end of the day. In no case, however, should a team force their driver to crash, as that simply isn’t sporting.
Team orders should not be banned from F1, because even if you do ban them, they will still be used. There is no way of getting around it, as was shown the last time team orders were banned. I do, however, enjoy seeing team mates fight wheel-to-wheel, and not a demonstration where cars follow each other in a line. Let your guys go racing!
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