The rights and wrongs of team orders

The FIA World Council meets this week in Paris to discuss what to do about Ferrari’s apparent use of team orders in Hockenheim. The team has denied any such motivation, but few believe this. The team will no doubt continue to deny the charge and will make the point that there have been other occasions when messages to the drivers from other teams may have been team orders. The reality is that there is a rule that does not allow team orders and that pretty much everybody believes it was broken. Whether the rule is right or wrong is not the question being looked at, although there is sure to be a discussion about what to do in the future as team orders have always been a part of the sport – and most teams believe that they should be. The rule was created in 2002 because attitudes in the world have changed and people watching the racing – and betting on it – felt that they had been cheated by the result of the Austrian GP. That incident was caused because Rubens Barrichello backed off and allowed Michael Schumacher to win the race. This was not done in any subtle fashion, probably because Barrichello wanted to show that he could beat Michael and was only giving way because he had to. Prior to this, there had been many occasions in the history of the sport where team orders came into play. Several World Championships were settled using team orders. That is how it has always been and one can see why.

The sport was first organised as a battle between nations, fighting for a trophy provided by American newspaper tycoon James Gordon Bennett, who realised that national rivalry was what worked best in Europe and so pitched nation against nation, rather than car against car, or driver against driver. This worked for a number of years but the dominance of the French manufacturers meant that the real competition was the elimination trials to establish which company would represent France, rather that the Trophy event itself. As a result the Automobile Club de France accepted a proposal from the French manufacturers in 1904 to organise a new kind of race, called a Grand Prix, that allowed countries to have entries proportional to the level of car production. The other nations objected and so the Gordon Bennett Trophy died and the Grand Prix was established, with 10 French car manufacturers providing most of the cars, with single entries from Italy and Germany. Britain chose to boycott the event. From that point on, the sport was about the car companies. Drivers quickly became heroes, but their stardom was always secondary to the competition between the teams.

The celebration of famous people is not a new phenomenon, but it intensified through the 20th Century, thanks to the development of mass media, radio, the movie industry and television. This meant that fame could be commercialised and this created new demands in many walks of life. Royalty, movie people, singers and sportsmen and women found themselves more under the spotlight, as millions of viewers and readers devoured any and all information fed to them on a daily basis. Such is this demand that today the fame industry has created celebrities who are famous simply for being famous, while the free flow of information on the Internet means that anyone can be famous if they can convince consumers to read, watch or listen to what they have to say.

Formula 1 moved with the times and Bernie Ecclestone was able to use the televising of the sport to create a massive money-making machine, which he took full advantage of, while other lagged behind. The sport discovered that things had changed in 1994 when the death of Ayrton Senna became a enormous global news story that left many in F1 amazed. Three years later in Jerez the question of team orders came into the spotlight when McLaren insisted that Coulthard move over for Mika Hakkinen at the end of a race in which Michael Schumacher had tried to shove Jacques Villeneuve off the track in order to win the World Championship. McLaren said that it was a decision based on repaying Hakkinen for staying with them through the lean years. At the very next race, the Australian GP in 1998, the same two drivers went through the same process, but for different reasons, after a team mistake saw Hakkinen pit and lose the lead when there was no reason to pit. Coulthard was again told to give up the place. This upset race promoter Ron Walker who went on the attack, claiming that “it is not the right of team owners to decide who’s going to win.”

The FIA World Council considered the matter and ruled that stewards should severely penalise teams if there was “any act prejudicial to the interests of any competition”. This meant that the stewards were allowed to decide if team orders had been given or not. It meant that teams had to start pretending that there were no team orders being used, telling drivers to feign
technical problems, make deliberate mistakes or bring cars into the pits for no reason except to change the running order. In August that year, for example, Ferrari went through a charade in Austria where Eddie Irvine claimed to have had brake problems that allowed Michael Schumacher to catch and pass him. Then Irvine’s lap times improved again. The FIA said that team orders had never been banned, unless they were deemed to be prejudicial to the interests of any competition. “It is perfectly legitimate for a team to decide that one of its drivers is its World Championship contender and that the other will support him,” the FIA said in a statement, adding that any future instance of team orders would be “judged on its facts and in the light of long-standing motor sport tradition”. What was not acceptable was any arrangement “which interferes with a race and cannot be justified by the relevant team’s interest in the championship.”

The rule was left open to interpretation and during 1999 there were clearly team orders being applied, notably at Hockenheim where Mika Salo handed victory to Eddie Irvine, Schumacher being out of action with a broken leg. When Michael came back,
the Malaysian GP was a clear example of the same thing with Schumacher pulling all the strings to make sure that Irvine would win. It was Austria 2002 that brought the question to the fore again, with outrage in the grandstands and cries of “scandal”
when Schumacher and Barrichello arrived in the Media Centre for the post-race interviews. Reaction from around the world underlined the disaster. The FIA could not punish the drivers for what had occurred and recognised “the long-standing and traditional right of a team to decree the finishing order of its drivers in what it believes to be the best interest of its attempt to win both World Championships.”

However what had to be addressed was the question of at what point the interests of a team should be allowed to influence the interests of the sport. Teams had to learn to act responsibly towards the sport, in addition to looking after their own interests. These days it is clear that the average fan wants to watch a straight fight between two competitors. What happened in Hockenheim compounded the damaging belief that F1 is more a business than a sport.

One can argue that the new demands on the sport are being driven by people who are ignorant of the past, but this is not really the point. Any sport must adapt to suit its fans. If it does not, then it will suffer. The skill is to find the correct solution that does not leave the fans feeling cheated, but at the same time does what is best for the team. The rule may need to be changed, but perhaps it would be wiser to try to make teams understand that they must respect the sport above all else and that there are times when they will gain more if they do not interfere. Yes, there may be some collisions between team-mates as a result and perhaps a title will be lost which might not have been lost, but if the fans are happy, then the sport is healthier and everyone will gain from that. Ferrari handled the switch of Massa and Alonso at Hockenheim without subtlety. Alonso’s pace was far from proven by the lap times. If he had an advantage it was minimal and he could not overtake his team-mate. If Alonso had been one point behind Lewis Hamilton in the World Championship then it might have been a different story, but he was not. At the same time Ferrari blew the opportunity for a fairytale result for Massa, a year to the day after his near-fatal accident in Hungary. A victory would have been a far better story for the sport – and for Ferrari.