28/07/2010
FEATURE BY GLEN CROMPTON
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Either of the following phrases sound familiar? Roll them slowly over your tongue and try them with odd, foreign accents - you'll get the idea.
"…of course there aren't many passing opportunities here at <insert track name >…"
"…of course as soon as I was close behind <insert driver name > I lost so much grip that I couldn't pass…"
GP after GP, season after season I have been bombarded with variants of the above banalities. Yep, back to my old hobby horse - that the fundamental formula of Formula 1 is, and has long been flawed as far as passing and entertainment are concerned. Endless futile bandaids have achieved sod-all. And so what's that got to do with the current Ferrari controversy? Well if that problem didn't exist, Rob Smedley wouldn't have been apologising to his driver over the radio and making it oh-so-clear to the listening authorities that Ferrari probably did a naughty thing. Fernando should have just cruised up to the back of Massa and done what race drivers are meant, paid and born to do - if indeed he was so much faster.
Let me get one thing straight, under the current rules team orders are banned so I'm not here to defend Ferrari.
From the broadcast of the German Grand Prix, there doesn't seem to be much doubt that Ferrari arranged the order of their cars and thus determined the winner. Clearly the FIA think so because they invited Ferrari to write them a cheque larger than most people's annual wage. They also extended an invite to appear at the World Motorsport Council which is not a sought-after gig.
In 2002 in Austria, Ferrari pulled Rubens aside in favour of Michael. It was in the wake of this and the supposed public outcry (bookmakers outcried loudest from what I hear) that the FIA opted to outlaw the practise of teams deciding in what order their drivers finished. For most of the preceding half century this right of teams had been legal and unfettered. Betting agencies not withstanding, I've oft pondered if the outcry had more to do with the ability of Schumacher to violently polarise fans.
Not too many years prior to Austria2002gate (isn't that how you name controversies?) McLaren pulled an identical stunt not once but twice and in consecutive races. As the world (again) focused on a controversial crash involving Michael at the final GP of 1997 in Spain, McLaren choose to have David Coulthard cede his lead to team mate Hakkinen. That case was further sullied by an aired radio communication between the Williams pitwall and Jacques Villeneuve indicating that a deal may have been done with McLaren prior to the race - a deal apparently not designed to advantage Ferrari. McLaren visited exactly the same fate on Coulthard in the opening round of 1998 at Melbourne and I was there to see it live and groan. 1998 also saw Eddie Jordan famously order the younger Schumacher sibling hold station behind team mate Damon Hill in Belgium. My views on Mr Jordan's recent media pomposity are best left unaddressed for now.
However old the practise of issuing team orders may be, so too is the will of hardened race drivers to ignore them and I'm hoping Mike Lawrence will soon remind us of some of the more amusing examples (that's a big hint Doctor Mike). I always thought it was pretty sporting of David Coulthard not to claim radio failure as his recidivist masters ordered him to gift his wins to his Finish team mate - something which at the time caused me to cheekily publish that as far as Ron was concerned in "in order to finish first, first you must be Finish". Me, I like Massa and I am glad to see him back at the top of F1 but I would like to have seen him open his radio mike button after his engineer passed on the interesting factoid (supposedly a code but perhaps the most unsecret one ever) that Fernando was quicker and spend the remainder of the race singing really annoying tunes while ignoring team orders.
It is worth considering just how far this team orders thing goes in the eyes of the FIA? According to the press release, and with due reference to the relevant items of the FIA web site, Ferrari has been penalised and summonsed under Article 39.1 of the FIA 2010 Formula One Sporting Regulations which reads:
"Team orders which interfere with a race result are prohibited."
As well as Article 151c of the 2010 FIA International Sporting Code which reads:
"Any fraudulent conduct or any act prejudicial to the interests of any competition or to the interests of motorsport generally."
I gather an assumption exists that both these articles only apply to actions taken during a GP but that is so very not what is written. Consider the recent and public furore whereby Red Bull removed the one and only intact development front wing - which was known to be an improvement - from Mark Webber's car and fitted it to Vettel's. The way I read both of the above rules, that constitutes exactly the same manner of transgression as Ferrari's. It happens that the car with the lesser wing won the race but that doesn't change the intent or the action taken. For that matter is a contract that specifies a particular driver as "a number 2 driver" any different? Then what of a team encouraging its second driver on the road to lap less, er, energetically than he might be able to that he back the field behind up allowing the team mate to scamper off up the road and garner a full pit stop worth of advantage on his rivals? Pretty sure I've seen that one since team orders were banned. I have no law degree but from the rules above as I read them, that would also be a punishable thing.
So team orders are not allowed at present. I'm not going to cite any cases lest I be accused of drawing the FIA's attention to any as-yet-unpunished transgressions but… Am I alone in the last season or two in hearing the odd radio message from team to driver and wondering what was really going on? Did so and so really need to change engine maps to save fuel? Were the brakes on only one of Team Z's cars in need of nursing? There's a lot of buttons and dials on those steering wheels and drivers rely on pit wall advice to turn them the right way. Would it be so hard to mislead a driver into dialing up a worse car? Don't know, but I bet it's already been done. Moreover, some of these instances I suspect I've detected have happened down the field - I hope the FIA doesn't only take an interest when the podium is involved.
Hypothetically let's say a particular team arrives in a situation towards the end of the season whereby the finishing order of their drivers may have a critical impact on the championships. They already have a good idea prior to the race what other team's strategies and pace are and projections of who will be where on the track at a given point in the coming GP. So this hypothetical team sits down with its drivers before the race and says "OK driver 1, if you are ahead of driver to 2 on lap blah blah, and the other teams are in a certain position, we are gonna need you to swap places. Now we can't tell that on the radio cos Charlie's listening so what we do is this. Driver 1 if we put the numbers on your pit board to the left instead of the right, you wait 2 laps then get on the radio and claim there's something wrong at the back of the car. We talk it through, give it enough laps to seem to be checking telemetry then finally we come back to you on the radio and tell you to bring it into the box 'cos we can't see anything on the data but we can't compromise safety. Got it?"
Yes, I know it's a lame and simple example but the fact is the ONLY way the FIA could prosecute a case is if somebody around the table rats the scheme out. Mind you the FIA has already handed immunity to a driver who deliberately committed the worst sin any race driver can in my eyes and deliberately crashed his car. His reward of immunity may have allowed the FIA to attempt to punish others, albeit until the matter was tested in a real court but this sets a precedent suggesting my case and my plot may not be so hot.
In the case of Ferrari at Germany in 2010, the enactment of the team order was so blatant as to almost be comical. I've already read opinions claiming this as typical of their arrogance and adding - as such authors always seem to - that Ferrari has special status with the FIA and that this will only be helped now their ex-boss is the FIA president. I don't believe any of this to be true for the record.
So do I agree with team orders? Well, I hated seeing DC hauled out of Mika's way, I hated seeing Ralf not allowed to tackle Damon, I hated seeing Rubens gift his victory to Michael and I hated seeing Massa hand his win to Fernando. That's what me the fan thinks and I'll hate it every time I see it. I don't much care if at any point in history it is legal or not, I just hate seeing it happen.
The clinical fact is that there are times when a team will advantage its prospects in one or both championships with team orders and I think they should be allowed to. They, after all, raise the money to pay the drivers, build the cars and go racing. I think they should be allowed to do what they see fit with their drivers. If they do so in an unpopular way and it cost them fans, well, I suppose that is a decision for the team, not the governing body and certainly not me. As I've already said, if the teams need to beat the team order rules they'll find a way and I think some already have. I hold that rules that are likely to be as difficult to enforce as team order rules are bad rules.
But for now there are team order rules and Ferrari are being called to account for breaking them. I'm interested to see how that plays when the WMC next meet because the severity of the penalty or perhaps the lack of it may well decide just how crafty the other teams become should they find themselves needing to issue team orders. Only one thing is certain, that whatever the WMC decides, they will be accused of either favouring or victimising Ferrari because that team seems to polarise fans just as violently as one of their former drivers.