26/03/2013
NEWS STORY
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One man who literally salivating at the global coverage Formula One is getting following Sunday's Malaysian Grand Prix is Bernie Ecclestone, though outwardly he is angered by Red Bull's handling of the situation... and team orders.
It comes to something when The Guardian runs an editorial on Formula One, the left-wing newspaper declaring that Sebastian Vettel "deserves praise, not criticism" for what he did on Sunday, asking its readers; "what is the point of being in an F1 race if you are not trying to win?"
Noting the newspaper's famed political leanings one reader wryly responds: "The Guardian should be supporting the collective over selfish individualism surely." Quite.
Whenever Formula One makes it from the back pages to the front, one man guaranteed to be wearing a grin from ear to ear is the circus master in chief, Bernard Charles, who even as you read this is probably chuckling all the way to the bank.
As fans lament the further manipulation of their sport, Pirelli's mandate to produce tyres that deliberately degrade in order to necessitate more pit stops and compromise team strategy being the most obvious example, Ecclestone is feigning outrage at Sunday's shenanigans.
"At this stage of the championship, I do not believe there should be any team orders," he told the Daily Telegraph. "It does not matter who it is."
"Let's assume that these two guys are in a position to win the championship at the end of the year, then there is no way that Mark is going to help Sebastian," he warned. "So Sebastian has to think about that. Maybe there will be a stage when he would like Mark to help him, but I don't think Mark is going to come up front and do it.
"I suppose, from Christian's point of view, he was concerned that there was going to be an accident, with neither of them finishing," the F1 supremo continued. "Looked at from that angle, you could say both of them were silly. The guy to back off could have been Sebastian. On the other hand, they're racing. Sebastian wants to win the world championship, and so does Mark.
"Sebastian is a racer, he doesn't know about losing," he added. "He doesn't want to lose. Show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser."
Ecclestone was also none too happy with the similar situation at Mercedes where Nico Rosberg was ordered to defer to Lewis Hamilton.
"I was disappointed that Mercedes didn't let Rosberg go past," he said. "I thought that was a stupid decision. I think Rosberg could have chased the two Red Bulls down a little more. That decision wasn't sensible."
Of course, team orders are nothing new in F1, or indeed motor sport, and while many (groan) will gladly point to the Schumacher/Barrichello days at Ferrari, team orders go back to the very beginning of the world championship, as Ecclestone well knows.
Recalling a situation at Brabham, the team he owned between 1971 and 1988, Ecclestone revealed the manner in which he dealt with one such situation.
"I had one driver challenging for the world championship, I'm not going to say who it was, and the other guy that weekend happened to be bloody quick. I said to him, 'Whatever you do, you ought to take it easy and let the other guy pass you'. He said, 'I wouldn't do that.' So I replied, 'Well, you can stand up in the seat of the car and wave him past, so the whole world can see this if you want.' But he insisted, 'I'm not going to do it'. So we just made sure he didn't have enough fuel in the car to finish the race."
Back to the matter at hand, Ecclestone agrees that Red Bull has its work cut out if it is to manage the situation, especially with the media whipping things up.
"If I was running the team I would say to Mark, 'Look, this is the position. You can't win the championship but Sebastian can, and it would be nice for the team if we had a world champion again'. But the problem is that conversation wouldn't go down too well with Mark. He would say, 'Well, remember what happened'.
"I'm a big, big supporter of Mark's, and we're very good friends," hew added. "But Sebastian is a three-time world champion so maybe people should have a bit more respect for him, too."