Team Orders

[wodonnell]

Didn't the FIA introduce a rule banning team orders a few years ago? ("Unless the race was to decide the championship")

I seem to remember this rule being introduced and in the very next race Eddie Irvine was leading Michael and then developed a mysterious braking problem for a few laps. Once MS had passed him Eddies problem seemed to strangely resolve itself.

[Ralf's Girl]

They did - it was after the pre-race agreement between Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard at the Australian GP of 1998. But don't forget, contravention of the rules is severely punished, except when you're Ferrari...

[Liz]

It will be severely punished in the court of public opinion, if nowhere else. And that's the court that pays the bills.

[Markules]

Well, it shouldn't be taken out of context - if it was three races from the end of the season and TGF was trailing to someone (god how unrealistic does that sound?) in the championship, we'd not be complaining.

Perhaps what the FIA should do is, for circumstances like this, set up a council of former drivers who can rule if the team orders in question were in the sport's best interest or not, should the race stewards file a complaint. Money fines or, in the case of persistant offenders, points deductions, could be a system of punishment.

[Liz]

The rule is very clear that this is NOT TO BE ALLOWED. If you don't plan to enforce the rule, then abolish the rule.

Or better yet, restrict the teams to one driver each.

But this idea that blatant contravention of the rules is allowed in circumstances when a driver has proved he can't win honestly is insane.

[wodonnell]

Just to take this from another angle... for which I will probably get shot down :-)

Although Ferrari clearly fixed the result today, I don't see how this fixing is any more serious than when a team orders the 2nd driver not to overtake. Everyone knows that if Barrichello were training and HAD made an attempt for the lead then his team mate is not going to put both of them off the road.

It is fairly standard procedure for teams to tell their drivers to hold station towards the end of a GP.

One example which spring to mind is when Damon Hill requested that the Jordan team "FIX" then 98 Belgian GP. Ralf would have easily passed Damon and won the race but Damon basically threatened to take both cars out if Ralf made a move.

On another occasion I remember that Senna gifted a win to Berger as a Thankyou for his help during the season.

[Liz]

The idea of this entire thread is that RACE FIXING IS WRONG. A criminal act does not become legal because a lot of people commit it, or else there would no longer be any crime.

If the rest of the kids in your class were kicking another kid, would you join in because "well, everyone else is doing it so it must be all right"?

[Mania]

wodonnel,

For the record, I thought Jerez 97 was wrong as was SPA 98. That said, Ferrari had no justification to do what they did today. They have openly stated that they would never ask Rubens to move over if he was leading the grand prix. Well, guess what? Today they did just that.

Team orders have been applied in the past - that is correct. But never, at least in my days of watching F1, has a result been so delibrately and openly fixed. Both Todt and Brawn knew what they would be doing when they sat their cheating butts on the pit wall this afternoon. That itself, should result in their cars being thrown out of the championship.

[SL]

They are the same team, there is no rule forbidding it, there was talk but no action. It may not seem fair but that is it. Rubens seems to accept it albeit not happily.

Did something similar not happen in a rally a few years ago ? It has happened several times in F1 and will probably continue to do so.

Simon

[f1manoz]

Under conventional law, what happened on Sunday was pure, unadulterated race-fixing, which is a criminal offence.

Todt, Montezemolo and TGF are criminals.

[djb]

I've been going through all the pile of comments concerning todays actions, and now this is the crazy part--here I am, while finding it not very classy (just as TGF taking RB's "faster" car recently) and finding the whole thing a real piece of "merde", the team ultimately has the right to do what they want no? As someone mentioned, and I thought also, in rallying , I have seen numerous cases in the last yeaars of teammates deliberately being late out of repair areas etc so as to take a time penalty, for the other team cars advantage.

My thoughts are therefore, how do you have rules that say that things like today cannot happen, (again, thinking of the kerfufle in Australia with the Macs) but you have the forementioned examples of Irvine's "brake" problems. Someone somewhere did mention that with the 2-way telemetry, it would be extremely easy to avoid all this public stuff, and simply dial in an ever so slight engine mapping or something that would for all intents and purposes, come up with the same result. Rubens (or whoever) would honestly say how his engine was going off, and so he had to let his teammate through for the win, and no one would know any better.

This of course does not touch on the whole spirit of the sport, "when" in a season stuff like this is considered acceptable, unbalanced team bias for a certain driver and the whole shebang that a public shaming like today brings out, but my questions are more in line with how are team orders ever to be "banned" when 1. Teams should be able to decide what is best for their interests, and 2. the technology would seems to be able to hide it anyway if anyone wanted to.

anyhoo, just some thoughts

[cos]

this is from grandprix.com after the 1998 Australian GP, it makes interesting reading:

MARCH 23, 1998
The FIA and team orders
IN the finest tradition of nonsensical decision-making the FIA World Council has decided to crack down on team orders in Grand Prix racing. The Council said that it was informing stewards (most of whom sit on the World Council anyway) that they should severely penalize teams if there was "any act prejudicial to the interests of any competition".
This effectively means that the FIA stewards will be allowed to decide if team orders were given and may penalize teams as a result. There are no guidelines to restrict such arbitrary decision-making. What will definitely happen is that any teams using team orders will now do so in a much more disguised fashion, telling drivers to pretend to have technical problems, make deliberate mistakes or bring cars into the pits for no reason if they wish to change the order of the cars. It will be virtually impossible for stewards to ascertain when team orders have been applied and when fate has played a hand.

This fudging of the regulations - and the similar vagueness of the tire regulations - mean that the FIA is exposing itself to the charge that the rules can be brought into play if the World Championship needs to be manipulated to bring about an exciting end-of-season showdown. And that cannot be good for the reputation of Grand Prix racing.

[f1manoz]

Well quite clearly Ferrari broke that one.

But, of course, since it's Ferrari, nothing will happen.

We're not all that naive to think Ferrari would actualy be fined?!?

[KA]

Originally posted by wodonnell
Although Ferrari clearly fixed the result today, I don't see how this fixing is any more serious than when a team orders the 2nd driver not to overtake. Everyone knows that if Barrichello were training and HAD made an attempt for the lead then his team mate is not going to put both of them off the road.

It is fairly standard procedure for teams to tell their drivers to hold station towards the end of a GP.

One example which spring to mind is when Damon Hill requested that the Jordan team "FIX" then 98 Belgian GP. Ralf would have easily passed Damon and won the race but Damon basically threatened to take both cars out if Ralf made a move.

There's a slight difference though bewteen ordering your drivers to hold station to avaoid the risk of losing a 1-2 position and asking the guy who's leading to move over and gift the win to his team-mate...

Yes they're both pretty cynical moves to make, but yesterday's farce is definitely worse....