Drivers on TEAM ORDERS

[Bononi]

From F1racing.net
Formula One's top drivers admitted here Thursday that the banning of team orders is impossible to police. One year ago at the A1 Ring here, the sport was thrown into controversy when Ferrari used team orders to force Rubens Barrichello to allow his world champion team-mate Michael Schumacher past at the final corner of Austrian Grand Prix.

The pair were greeted on the podium with boos from the crowd and Schumacher forced Barrichello onto the top step to hail the Brazilian as the rightful winner. The team received a 500,000 dollar fine and the sport's governing body, the FIA, banned team orders at the start of this year.

Schumacher, who blamed the reaction of the sport's followers for the ban, said: "Whether it is enforceable or not I don't know, but certainly the obvious team orders will obviously be enforceable. We have made a clear statement from our point of view on how we are going to do things and there is nothing else to add from my side."

Fellow German Nick Heidfeld, who drives for the Ferrari-supported Sauber team, was less cautious in his comments and insisted it will not be possible for the FIA to rid the sport of team tactics. "I think it is not really possible to ban them or control it," he said. "The only thing is that perhaps it changes things so it is not so obvious for the spectators any more which you could argue about if it is better or not."

Team orders have always been a significant part of the sport ever since the inauguration of the Formula One World Championship in 1950.

It was Ferrari's blatant use of such tactics that astonished observers and drew widespread criticism, especially because of their dominant position in the world championship at the time.

But Michael Schumacher's brother Ralf, who drives for Williams and finished just off the podium in fourth place in this race last year, believes Ferrari did nothing wrong and said the FIA were wrong to react by banning team orders. "I think it is impossible to get rid of team orders and it should be down to the team to decide whatever they think is necessary to do in this moment," he said. "I don't have a problem with what happened here last year. I thought it was the right thing to do."

Australian Mark Webber, who said his Jaguar team does not use team orders, admitted he and Brazilian team-mate Antonio Pizzonia can still be asked by their team to move over.

But he believes that is acceptable as long as it is all part of the strategic make-up of the sport and not detrimental to the spectators enjoyment of the event. "We don't have any team orders but there could be scenarios in a race where you are on a different strategy," he said. "It is quite a powerful tool for you to move out of the way for your team-mate to make your strategy work or a better situation for the whole team and that could swing around to the next race because he is doing something different."

Can anyone develop an eletronic device to ban team orders ????