03/08/2010
FEATURE BY MIKE LAWRENCE
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It seems that the Scuderia still thinks that FIA stands for 'Ferrari's Internal Agency', Why else would it have so blatantly broken the rule about team orders. It was an act of arrogance which showed contempt for the rules, the sport and the fans.
In retrospect, some people are bleating that banning team orders is a bad rule. If it was a bad rule in Germany, it was a bad rule, period. There have been plenty of opportunities to make that point, and to lobby against the rule. I do not recall criticism of the rule until after Ferrari flouted it. It was not a hot topic on Internet fora.
Maybe Alonso was faster, but he didn't prove it. You show that you are faster by ov-er-ta-king. It needs spelling out. The point of motor racing is to be the fastest with a given car on a given track and if there is a slower car ahead, your job is to overtake. It is why Ferrari pays you millions.
At the end of the German GP, we were treated to a load of bullshit about the result being for the good of the team. If Felipe had led a Ferrari 1-2, the team would have still taken 43 points in the Constructors' Championship and, correct me if I am wrong, that is the title that teams contest.
All the talk about the team, the good of the team, motor racing being a team sport, etc., is hog wash. Ferrari set out to manipulate the Drivers' Championship. Alonso would have been higher up the standings had he not acted like a big girl's blouse in the previous two races.
I hope that the meeting of the WMSC in September excludes both cars from the results. Alonso complained about Massa over the radio because he could not pass and if you cannot pass at Hockenheim, you should be in another line of work, like flower arranging.
Massa could have refused to allow Alonso to pass on the grounds that it contravened the rules. He would have been on firm ground. He also would not have dragged the name of Ferrari into the mud and the vast crowd in Germany would not have been short-changed as were we watching at home. There was supposed to be a race, not a cynical demonstration.
Rob Smedley, Felipe's engineer, was forced to put a spin on what he said over the radio and one can see the work of a spin doctor. I knew motor racing had changed when I went to interview Harvey Postlethwaite at Tyrrell for an article about working with Jean Alesi and there was a PR guy in the room. It was a retrospective piece, so no state secrets, but there was a PR guy present.
Given only the transcript of what Smedley said, it would be possible to believe, just, with some imagination, that a team order was not being issued, but we heard Smedley and heard the inflection in his voice. No Anglophone could have mistaken the message. There are times when inflection is everything and this was one.
Stefano Domenicali, a personable man who makes himself available to the BBC and whose understanding of English is excellent, made all manner of statements. Were I ever in need of a fake alibi, I would value him.
It puts me in mind of a team owner who sacked an employee. When asked why, the owner said, 'I know what I pay you. I know what house you live in, the car your wife drives and where you go on holiday. You live way above your salary. The heated swimming pool is just taking the piss.'
For the third race in a row, Alonso was having a hissy moment. At Valencia, he was so busy bemoaning his lot that a Sauber overtook a Ferrari. His behaviour was disgraceful and if Ferrari lose a place in the Constructors' Championship by the odd point and, with it, millions in TV revenues, they would be justified in docking his pay.
I cannot think of another instance when a top level driver has so completely lost the plot, at least in postwar racing. Luigi Fagioli had purple moments a couple of times when racing for Mercedes-Benz in the 1930s, but that was because team orders would not allow him to pass a slower team-mate. The great Luigi twice abandoned cars rather than drive behind someone who was slower. This is the exact opposite of Alonso at Hockenheim.
At Silverstone, Alonso should have relinquished a place to Robert Kubica, whom he had overtaken illegally. Kubica retired just as the Stewards issued the drive-through penalty and some people thought that it was unfair that Fernando still had to serve his penalty. If you are on a charge of shop lifting, you do not get off if the shop goes bust before your trial.
Alonso was at fault, of course he had to serve a penalty. Kubica's retirement did not have any bearing on the offence. Alonso could have let Kubica by, but he thought he could infringe the rules and get away with it. If he did not think so, at least the Ferrari pitwall team did.
What Ferrari did at Hockenheim was to interfere with the Drivers' Championship. Sir Frank Williams has never done that, he regards his competition as the Constructors' title. When Mansell outdrove Piquet at Silverstone in 1987, Nelson threw his toys out of his pram and Frank ignored him since Williams got its 1-2. Also, Mansell's drive was entertaining, it won fans for the sport. Piquet still went on to win the World Championship, but Silverstone was Nigel's day, just as Hockenheim should have been Felipe's day.
People place bets on motor racing, not to the same extent as horses or greyhounds, but if I had gone to a local bookie and placed a tenner on Massa to win at Hockenheim, I would be spitting razor blades. Forget all the PR spin, Ferrari rigged the result. If I want to see rigged sport, I watch professional wrestling. Ferrari has reduced Formula One to the level of wrestling.
Many countries take the BBC coverage of F1 and after the race, David Coulthard claimed that there had always been team orders in Grand Prix racing. He cited the case of Peter Collins handing over his Lancia D50 (entered by Scuderia Ferrari) at the 1956 Italian Grand Prix.
Unfortunately, like most people who quote from history, DC has no idea of the real story. What had happened was that Fangio was out of the race and Collins had only to make it to the finish to become World Champion. Entirely unprompted, Collins handed over his car to Fangio. It was not team orders, it was an act of extraordinary generosity.
By calling it team orders, DC diminishes one of the greatest acts of sportsmanship in the history of any sport.
Fangio had had a dreadful time at Ferrari in 1956. The pace of Luigi Musso and Peter Collins had unsettled him. Fangio got into such a tizzy that he thought there was a plot against him and he insisted on bringing in his own mechanic. He also sought the help of a shrink. This may shock people who have been fed legends rather than history, but it is all on record.
Peter Collins had been almost adopted by Enzo Ferrari. Mrs Ferrari even washed and ironed Peter's laundry. Peter saw Fangio sitting on the pit counter, felt sorry for him, and handed over his car. Later he said that he would have plenty more opportunities to win the Championship while Fangio was near the end of his career.
Collins was not obeying team orders and he certainly was not doing it 'for the good of the team' because the Constructors' cup was not then instituted. He was young, glamorous and cocky. He was also dead within two years while Fangio had a successful business career after he retired from racing.
Team orders were evoked in the first two races of the year. Luigi Musso had to hand over his car to Fangio in Argentina and Collins had to do the same at Monaco. Without those orders, Fangio would not have been in with a chance. 1956 was not his finest year, that had yet to come.
In telling the story of Collins at Monza, I touched upon an essential point about team orders. In the days when chassis were made on jigs by welders, and engine components were made to a wide range of tolerances, quality was variable. There would be a chassis reckoned to be sweeter than the rest and an engine which produced more power.
A team often did have a Number One and he got the best of everything because he was the one most likely to win. With everything being made by hand, reliability was a huge factor. Most teams could not make two equal cars, let alone reliable cars.
When Moss led Vanwall, 1957-8, he had the right to drive every car taken to a race and chose the chassis, engine and gearbox which he thought the best, they all varied so much. Tony Brooks was next in line and Stuart Lewis-Evans got the rest. Lewis-Evans was capable of setting pole, and that was really something, driving the same car as Moss and Brooks, but he tended not to finish.
Lotus wanted to sign Derek Warwick alongside Ayrton Senna for 1986 and Senna vetoed the move. Senna was not afraid of Warwick, or anyone, but he knew that Team Lotus was not capable of preparing two equal cars. At the time, Williams and McLaren were probably the only teams able to do that. Senna made his point not because of Warwick, but because of Lotus.
These days, teams bring two cars to the grid each made to tolerances which are rare outside of aerospace. There is no longer a Number One car, so the Number One driver has ceased to exist.
There have been instances of team orders. In the early 1930s, the Alfa Romeo works drivers would arrive at a race where most of the field were privateers. They agreed on a finishing order, put on a show and split the prize money. The public went home satisfied. If the Alfa Romeo drivers had actually raced each other, they could have overstressed their machines and the team was the main attraction for the next race.
It was race fixing, sure, but there were no championship points at stake. The spectators did not know what was going on. There were no TV cameras to lie to.
In the 1930s, Mercedes-Benz was keen on team orders. They and Auto Union each had one Italian driver, Mussolini was Hitler's role model. Dick Seaman got a drive because he represented the British Empire and he had a German wife. Also he was a very good driver, but that was not the main thing.
Rene Dreyfus was a better driver than most employed by the German teams, but his father was Jewish. Jean-Pierre Wimille turned down offers because he was a French patriot who became one of the few to actually serve in the Resistance.
Today, cars are equal and each garage does not enter one team, it enters two teams. At McLaren, there are Hamilton's people and there are Button's. Each driver has his own preferences, their driving styles are different.
No doubt the engineers meet up socially and swap stories, but they do not discuss their team-within-a-team. The same is true the length of the pitlane.
It is only recently that we heard about a driver's main rival being his team-mate. This became true when every team was able to field two identical cars. When Jean Behra drove for Maserati, he did not get equipment equal to Moss or Fangio because Maserati could not make every component to the same standard, they not having computer-controlled machine tools.
The engine of the cheapest Korean import is made to tolerances that only Rolls-Royce could achieve a few years ago.
Sebastian Vettel gives names to his monocoques and for some reason, he took against one. After Mark Webber auditioned for the Red Arrows at Valencia, he got assigned that monocoque. Some people wrote that he was getting Vettel's cast-offs, but Mark is a rational man. He knows that F1 equipment is made to within microns, a micron being a fiftieth of the width of a human hair. Vettel took against a particular monocoque, Webber has had two wins from three races with the same piece of kit.
In the days of Vanwall and the Maserati 250F every component was unique and some cars were better than others, as were their engines and transmissions. There was a case for team orders, look at the retirement rates. The microchip has removed the case.
Not so long ago it would have been impossible to have imposed a limit of eight engines per season or to have insisted that a gearbox could be replaced only after four races without invoking a penalty.
There is no longer a case for team orders. Ferrari manipulated Hockenheim to favour one driver over another, it rigged the result. The big girl's blouse was whining that he lacked the gonads to overtake. Then Ferrari insulted you and I with blatant lies and had its drivers and engineers do the same.
When the WMSC meets next month, I hope they throw the book at Ferrari and exclude the team from the results at Hockenheim. Any chance that the big girl's blouse now has in the Championship is anyway tarnished because he could not overtake without outside assistance.
It was a year to the day since Felipe had suffered an horrendous accident, not of his making, and he was back on form. He deserved to win, if he could maintain his position. There was not much chance of he being challenged since the driver behind was a big girl's blouse.
Big girl's blouse is a native English phrase with no easy translation or explanation. Alonso is taking whinging and whining to a level undreamed of even by Nelson Piquet Maximus or the previous undisputed champion, Nigel Mansell.
The reason why Ferrari must be stripped of all points and places at Hockenheim is the way they treated the people who pay their wages, you and me. Even if we only watch a race on television, the audience at home counts when it comes to negotiating television revenue.
Stripping Ferrari of points and places would not be unfair on Massa because he connived with an illegal instruction. Massa could have refused and been on firm ground. He then lost much of the affection I have for the guy by spouting about the team.
As for the team orders rule, it has to stand and be enforced. The Stewards found Ferrari guilty and imposed the maximum penalty, a day's wages for Alonso, but they also referred the cheating to the WMSC and that is serious.
I will listen to anyone arguing against the team orders rule provided you can prove you raised the issue in a forum before Hockenheim. My mail box will have a quiet time on that score.
Mike Lawrence
mike.lawrence@pitpass.com
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