I think it’s evident from the ruling that the FIA is actually starting to recognise its position on team orders is simple untenable.
When you build up a championship where the grand prize, or grand prix if you prefer, is the drivers’ world championship, you can’t expect teams not to start looking at ways to ensure that they achieve that all important goal.
Okay, there’s a constructors championship, but primarily people remember the drivers’ champions and the cars that they were driving at the time. Who really remembers that Ferrari were the 2008 constructors champions? No, it was Lewis Hamilton in the McLaren that won in F1 in almost everyone's memory except the most devoted statistics lovers.
Teams are of course going to start manipulating the results as early as they can to ensure one of their drivers wins that title, and as soon as a team thinks that letting one score over the other is a threat to that all important championship, or in the case of a single race, that their two drivers actually competing for position could cause trouble, they will in most cases intervene (we've seen what happens when they don't (insert point towards Red Bull Racing).
The problem is how do you actually rule what a team order is? There’s no part of article 39.1 that isn’t woefully subject to interpretation.
If the FIA wants to ban team orders, then they have to define what it is. The problem is, if they do define what it is, then teams will know exactly what is outside of the boundary and work outside of it.
Some might say providing better parts to one driver over the other is a team order.
Some might say ordering one of your drivers not to attempt to pass the other is a team order.
And those are the two examples from Ferrari’s chief rivals that we already know about. What are the ones we don't see? What about the teams that are too small for many to really care about whether they employ team orders?
The problem is, team orders aren’t really a bad thing, and the truth is the FIA doesn’t want to get rid of them.
What Red Bull did, the FIA don’t mind, what McLaren did, the FIA don’t mind. Quite evidently as a result of the World Motorsport Council's ruling in truth, what Ferrari did, the FIA don’t care about either…but when it comes to the average viewer, the general media, who wants to feel they’ve seen two drivers, even if they’re in their own team compete at the highest level, to a point where if they even take each other out, just like Red Bull did in Turkey, the viewer can see at least they tried to fight for it.
From any team's perspective, what happened in Turkey was ridiculous, and should never happen…but the teams must have some control to prevent their drivers from compromising the teams’ goal of winning the Formula 1 drivers championship.
The rule would be overlooked in scenarios where the rule just seemed to work against the sport as well, another reason why it’s so foolish.
For example, let’s say it’s the last race of the season; Sebastien Vettel has been ruled out of the championship, it’s now Mark Webber vs. Lewis Hamilton for the 2010 Formula 1 drivers championship – but wait, Webber’s in second place behind Vettel, and Hamilton is in third…the way the points stand in this hypothetical scenario means if the result stays like it is, Hamilton will win the championship by two points. If Vettel pulls over and lets Webber through, problem sorted, Red Bull are Formula 1 champions – but oh no, there’s Article 39.1.
So if Vettel pulls into the pits unnecessarily to get out of the way, is that a team order? Does it have to be said on the radio? Does it have to be agreed beforehand in some way to qualify?
Todt didn’t get involved, because the obvious declaration of bias would be thrown around if he did…even more than it is now than if he wasn’t. Of course it’s unavoidable: the former team manager of Ferrari is now in charge of the FIA!
The most important action to come out of the WMSC hearing is their review of 39.1. That says, they recognise something is wrong about it. The fact Ferrari were forced into a position where they blatantly had to lie about a very obvious implementation of a team order is the issue.
If they’d ‘dropped’ a wheel nut in the pitstop, would that have been fine? If after the pit board was put out with P3 shown as P03, and then Massa ‘accidentally’ skidded at the next corner and let Alonso through, that would have been fine? So as long as joe public were deceived properly, that’s okay, and that’s where 39.1 becomes a joke - it's not a sporting regulation, it's an entertainment regulation. Personally, I don’t want to have to think Massa was an idiot, I like to know when a driver is doing the right thing for the team.
The rule came in because Ferrari were fiddling results in a championship where there was no real threat to their No.1 driver from winning the championship, and Ferrari took away a victory from Rubens that would actually have been more popular than just another ordinary runaway Schumacher victory, in a season that transpired to be one of the most dire Formula 1 seasons on record.
Down with Article 39.1, and let’s get back to sanity again.
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