F1 Fanatic round-up: 9/9/2010

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The FIA says it will publish a full explanation for the Ferrari decision today, which of course will be on the site when it becomes available. Here’s today’s round-up:

Links

Ferrari accuse McLaren of secret team orders (Daily Express)

“Ferrari have spent a lot of time since Germany briefing against other teams, claiming McLaren told Lewis Hamilton in one race that the "cat was out of the house" to get him to pass team-mate Heikki Kovalainen.”

Comment of the day

The World Motor Sport Council’s decision yesterday not to punish Ferrari any further for using team orders in the German Grand Prix leaves us in an odd situation for the rest of the season, as John H explains:

It’s a dangerous precedent. So you can have team orders but it will cost you the measly sum of $100K. Any other team that does it now this season will have to get exactly the same punishment or it makes even more of a mockery of the council.
John H

From the forum

The funny F1 videos thread has been running for over a month and is still going strong.

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Mark Hitchcock and Prashanth Bhat!

On this day in F1

Ayrton Senna won the Italian Grand Prix for the first time in his career on this day 20 years ago.

The McLaren driver led home championship rival Alain Prost’s Ferrari, with their team mates Gerhard Berger (McLaren) and Nigel Mansell (Ferrari) behind them.

But the race is most famous for Derek Warwick’s violent crash at the start where he rolled his Lotus at the Parabolica:

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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68 comments on “F1 Fanatic round-up: 9/9/2010”

  1. Hopefully we will see the team orders ban removed as it is now clear that it can not be policed so it is no use having it in place.. I would like to see some provisions to protect all the ‘2nd’ drivers out there so there is fair competition between the two drivers on each team..

    1. I think can not, and they do not want to are to different things…

      The history of the sport stems rudimentary from nationalism, so If I heard the argument that team orders are right, because it is for the teams benefit, I would accept that.

      But… When the event happened, A rule was in place… So unless the rules are more like guidelines (again the pirates code) this isn’t a very good precedent.

      Any provision to protect second drivers has just gone out the window…

    2. “Can’t be policed”?

      No, in this case, it was policed, the stewards found them guilty, the WMSC upheld the judgement, they just didn’t bother punishing them.

      That’s not the same thing at all.

      1. Well, $100,000 plus lawyers’ fees is a punishment.

        Whether it was a just punishment or not is a different question.

    3. And the “protection for 2nd drivers” is … what? They already have it, in theory: a ban on team orders that prejudice their race.

      1. In theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice they are different…

    4. Hopefully we will see the team orders ban removed as it is now clear that it can not be policed so it is no use having it in place..

      Leaving teams free to undermine the spirit of competition if it suits them, thus negating the entire point of racing in the first place?

      If anything, the team orders ban shoud be tightened with the stewards given the power to stip any points received during the race for any team that does it.

    5. They can police the rule, but they didn’t.

  2. Happy birthday to my fellow Newcastle fan Mark Hitchcock, and Prashanth too!

    1. I second that, happy Birthday!

    2. :D Thankyou! Hopefully Newcastle will put the cherry on a very good birthday cake by winning this weekend!

  3. Regarding the comment of the day – that won’t happen. They won’t really make a definitive rule change, like they did when Hamilton ran out of fuel on his in-lap after the Canadian qualifying, but they will enforce it more strongly. If you can get away with it once – and all the big teams push the limits of what is allowed – then do it. There’s no prizes for the most law-abiding constructor.

  4. Sorry for the self indulgent one news but I have to share my excitement… I’m going to Monaco today! In fact I got a brief glimpse of the track while stopping at Monte Carlo train station today, walked out the station and realised I was at St Devote! So so amazing to see somwehere I’ve always wanted to go :)

    1. Congratulations. I’d love to go there myself.

    2. I had a similar experience in Monaco last year…I was crossing a road with my Dad when I suddenly realised that we were on the starting grid!

      Have a great time, be aware that most things are hideously expensive though!

      1. Oh yeah, I don’t intend to spend a single cent there!, I’m going to make myself a nice big pack lunch!

    3. I was there last week – it’s an amazing place.

      Make sure you allow at least an hour to walk round the track. It’s fairly easy to spot where it goes, just look for the small hatches in the ground which provide the supports for the armco barriers. Don’t follow the road round to the left at what looks like the top of Beau Rivage – the track goes on a bit further towards Casino Square. It’s easy to lose track of the circuit when you emerge from the Tunnel but just follow the line of the harbour round and you’ll soon find it again.

      They were setting up a yacht show when I was there but hopefully it will have gone by now. Check out the statues at Anthony Nogues and Ste Devote.

      If you want a reasonable value lunch there’s a place by La Rascasse (can’t remember the name, something de la Mer), a little along the harbour – two courses plus wine for 23 Euros, which wasn’t bad for Monaco. Alternatively, there’s a sports bar next door to it which boasts a Thierry Boutsen Jordan-Hart from 1993 and various other memorabilia. Hopefully you won’t have to pay for parking, which is extortionate.

      If you get time for anything not F1 related, it’s worth a wander up to the Aquarium just for a look at the outside of the building – it looks like it’s carved into the rock. Amazing.

    4. Hope you had a great day!

  5. Sorry for the triple comment, but reading John H’s take on FIA fines makes me think… I wish fines in F1 could actually mean something.

    With the glaring exception of McLaren’s quite ridiculous $100 Million fine, no F1 team ever seems to be fined anything more than a token amount. 100k is peanuts to any F1 team… even HRT wouldn’t get worked up about that! With Todt doing a pretty good job at the helm of the FIA atm I hope he can sort this out soon too

    1. Sorry for starting my comments with the word sorry too!

    2. That’s true. Ferrari only have to sell half of one of their lower end models to make up that fine. I’m really not sure any monetary penalty will ever make a difference though to a team like Ferrari. That’s why I’m particularly disappointed in the FIA’s decision as it does essentially set a precedent that points are just up for sale. Something like a race ban or a stripping of all points from that race would have been felt much more deeply by the Horse Whisperer.

      1. The decision would indicate that they are acknowledging they can not enforce the team orders ban and that it has been and will always be a part of formula 1 racing.. I expect that the review of this rule will see it scrapped for the better of the sport.. They simply can’t stop it happening so why even bother

        1. ” for the better of the sport”

          No, For the better of the sport would be better associated with teams playing honestly enough to let their guys race, even if it hurts the team overall, that would be better for the sport.

          The fact that they can’t is only enforced by this ruling, If this isn’t team orders, what is? If they had clamped down now, and hard, it would send a message… but they did the exact opposite.

        2. The “it’s always been” argument doesn’t hold water. Deaths have always been part of the sport as well. Some things we should strive to do without. I know F1 is not a meritocracy as everyone drives different cars, but team orders are very unsportsmanlike and should be left in the history of the sport. It may be hard to enforce, but that doesn’t mean the FIA should just roll over and give up. They should at least attempt to enforce it.

  6. Personally I think the loss of the constructors points for the race would have been the sensible decision. This would have stopped future occurrences this season, and sent out the correct message that the sporting code is there for a reason. It would have also sat better with the majority of F1 fans I believe, although I cannot speak for everyone of course.

    If McLaren were doing the same at Turkey (evidence would be communications not released to public) then they should also have their constructors points taken away from that race too. I have my suspicions because Lewis was explicitly told Jenson would not pass – how could have that statement been made by the race engineer if it wasn’t checked with Whitmarsh first? I think the fuel saving bit was something different and actually not manipulation at all, as it was proved they were running on empty at the end of the race.

    I do not dislike Ferrari, I’m actually a bit of a Felipe Massa fan to be honest. I think there can be a kind of McLaren vs Ferrari mentality in these debates that sometimes means looking at things as objectively as possible is quite tough. But I do think yesterday was a sad day for F1, and I hope that it will not happen again with the new look FIA.

    1. I wish they made ALL communications open. Then people can pick it all apart and know more what is going on. Supposedly Alonso had radioed in that he was faster the Massa a bit before the infamous message to Massa. However we never heard it and TV didn’t have access to it.

      1. Agreed. Ultimately teams that choose to use orders are only accountable to the fans since the FIA won’t enforce their own rules. Hopefully with the opening up of radio communications that will make teams think twice before pulling a Ferrari.

      2. This is what baffles me. From what we heard on TV we could already understand that illegal team orders were at play.

        We can only imagine what was said during all the discussion before that final coded message.

        For instance Smedly told Massa that if he kept setting fastest laps he “could” stil win. What on earth could be the justification for a sentence like that? there must have been some sort of compromise where Massa was told he needed to show that he was actually faster than Alonso or else …

  7. Ned, you’ll love it!

  8. Top Gear already said it “So… Fernando is faster than you, do you understand?” isn’t a coded message at all…

    if you want to do it, do it well… at least put some thought on it…

    “Duck hunt season is open”… “my granny made some cookies”…

    perfect team orders

    1. the cuckoo is coming through the doors
      fly is open

      1. According to that daily express link Keith added McLaren used a nice frase like that in 2008 to tell Lewis he could go past Heikki without problems.

        Really pathetic by Ferrari. As if anyone really cares about a team letting one of their cars past to give that car a chance of winning the other never had in the race.

    2. “The cat is out of the house”

  9. “you nicked that for 10,000 pounds yesterday. what a magic result on your behalf.”

    eddie jordan to martin whitmarsh, on hamilton’s fraudulent qualifying for the 2010 canadian gp.

    1. Yeah that was weird too. Either punish them or not.

      Same with all those stupid reprimands that they were handing out at the beginning of the season. I’ve never understood what a reprimand was supposed to do anyway.

      All these non-punishments just make the sport look ridiculous.

  10. Martin Whitmarsh wants the teams orders ban overturned. Of course he does, he wants the option for himself for the future.

    I just wonder, is no-one really that bothered because, let’s face it, Ferrari look unlikely to have a driver win the world championship? If Alonso was level on points with Webber, would we see more of a fight about this?

    It’s clear team orders are going to go, I just wish they’d replace it with something like the ability to switch points and not positions*. So Massa would have still got his win and trophy but the points would go to Alonso. Better than nothing and the farce can’t be seen on-track. Even I who am against team orders can understand the justification for them, so why not make them as palatable as possible?

    *Of course, only if they are fighting over the same position. You can’t do it if they’re 1st and 5th.

    1. I would be a little bit complicated

      1. And wrong, actually, now I think more about it. Manipulators should not be allowed an official fig leaf of cover.

  11. I have to laugh at the bitter complaints from ferrari re mclaren using ‘cat was out of the house’. This the way things are supposed to work guys. I propose that teams should be allowed to use team orders, but they have to use the most rediculous term they can think of to pass on the message. I would use ‘Your wife is here with a rolling pin’ for get out of the way :D

    1. And then post it on their website, so Fans can have fun during the race spotting wich rediculous phrase it was this time!
      That would be a fun contest :-D

    2. That “cat was out of the house” line cracks me up. At least McLaren had a sense of humor about it.

  12. Lol at Ferrari pointing the finger at McLaren, the thing is we all know that teams do have team orders from time to time, and if it’s in the last races and clearly affects the championship then it doesn’t seem to matter to anyone. The fact that Hockenheim was in the middle of the season where both drivers still had a chance at the championship made it so much worse. They didn’t even try to hide it, they did it in such audacity, and that is disrespecting the rules. They need to agree on when team orders are allowed and under what circumstances specifically. We as fans are bored of having rules that are constantly overlooked and ignored!

    Happy Birthday Mark Hitchcock & Prashanth Bhat!

    Ned hope you enjoy Monaco it’s great!

    1. …if it’s in the last races and clearly affects the championship then it doesn’t seem to matter to anyone.

      You hit the nail on the head. If it’s at the end of the season, the #2 driver usually WANTS to help their team mate clinch the championship, but so early in the season as Hockenheim it’s just insulting to everyone. It’s been said hundreds of times already, but if Alonso really was so much faster he should have been forced to take the lead. That was not a win.

  13. At this point the only thing that can be done is to repeal the team orders ban. While I do not agree with the WMC ruling, what is done is done. John H makes a very valid point. For the big teams $100,000 USD is not much money considering their massive expenditures.

  14. “We won’t apologize for or admit to breaking the rules but we’ll happily point out and whine about other teams doing it!”

  15. “Ferrari have spent a lot of time since Germany briefing against other teams, claiming McLaren told Lewis Hamilton in one race that the “cat was out of the house” to get him to pass team-mate Heikki Kovalainen.”

    If the message had been to Heikki in order to let Lewis pass, there would be an issue, but in my opinion, being told to pass the car in front of you is to be expected, regardless of it’s your teammate or not.

    1. except when Heikki obligingly moves aside for you, then it’s not really a pass, is it

      1. I would more love to know what they said to Massa and Piquet to make them move aside almost as fast as Heikki that race.

        And what would have been the message to Lewis about that?

        1. “Felipe, Lewis is faster than you. Can you confirm you understand? …. Oh no, I didn’t mean….”

        2. Yeah I’ll bet they were told that Lewis was coming up fast behind them too.

  16. I’m unhappy with the results, but I have found light of the situation in recent weeks by shouting at slow drivers in front of me “Fernando is faster than you!” Alas, none let me by…

    1. Hah! That’s a nice tactic, I’ll have to try it and see if I can get it to work.

      1. I will try it while on a bicycle, I think – at least then they can hear me!

  17. here is an idea: if a team finishes a race with both cars on adjoining positions then the second driver gets the same points as the one who finished in front of him. This could cut the whole team orders thing

    1. Do it the other way around and it would work even more!

  18. If I was Williams (my favourite team) or one of the middle ranking teams, I would nominate a second driver put half a race worth’s of fuel (or less) in the car get to the front (or try), order them to back the pack up.
    A well timed pit stop by the number one car, retire number 2 and you end up with a nicely enhanced result or podium not based on pace and racing but team orders.

    One car in the top three would be better than two cars say 8 and 10.

    Might not work but is would be fun watching a team trying it.

  19. Well, and how long will it take for the Sporting Body to get together to even start thinking about this? All this means now is that we, the fans (especially Ferrari fans) can no longer know whether a pass between ‘team-mates’ was a legitimate move or was an orchestrated one. And more to the point, the FIA won’t know either, and apparently won’t care.
    If we are going to see the eventual end of the ban, doesn’t it rather put an end to any point of pretending there is equality within the teams? They will decide a No1 and a No2 and that will be that. So we can have the introduction of a third car for the bigger teams (and a rookie driver who will have to keep his peace) and we will be able to predict the finishing order of most of the races. Won’t that be fun?
    As for Ferrari’s little rant about McLaren, it doesn’t go anywhere, since if Ferrari have not been penalised, nobody else can be, not even retrospectively.

  20. I am just fed up of the whole thing, and am glad it is (hopefully) over. This whole situation has just harmed the reputation of the FIA, as they have showed themselves incapable or unwilling to devise a rule about team orders that is enforceable.

    My thought is that either the FIA changed the rule as a sop to the fans after 2002 with no intention of ever using it or taking action against any teams (trusting that no team would be stupid enough to make it as blatant again), in which case they are nothing more than a body concerned with protecting their own interests pretending to care about spectators, or the rule was changed without anyone considering how it would be enforced if a team had the outlandish idea of using code rather than saying over the radio “Here are your team orders, let your team mate pass you. Those were your team orders.”, in which case they are a joke and should be ashamed to call themselves professionals.

    I am hoping that in the end the whole affair has no bearing on the champioship, and unless Ferrari pull something out of the bag at Monza I can’t see them overaking Red Bull or Alonso beating Webber and Hamilton.

    1. This picture send to Joe Saward by a commenter shows how a lot of us think of the matter. http://joesaward.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/screen-shot-2010-09-09-at-04-30-37.png?w=500&h=271

      I do not think it really is about the FIA supporting Ferrari, just the council members not wanting to punish this and a general lobby to freely use TO from F1 insiders.

      1. Awesome picture.

  21. As you can imagine we’re getting a large volume of comments at the moment. We’ve also got some kind of problem with the comment filter which is preventing some legitimate comments from being posted. Working on it.

  22. See how closely Alesi followed Berger. It was a better Formula then.

  23. Thank you Ned Flanders for ur wishes

  24. team orders, $50,000 per driver.
    taking out a competitor, drive through.

    you just might see some ugly racing near the end of the season, if the title is very close, its cheep enough, compared to the gains/rewards money wise.

    i would hate to see F1 go down this road but they have only them selves to blame “FIA” if it happens.

  25. I think I have a potential COTD attached below. Although it is my opinion, I am sure many people share my view of things:

    Formula 1

    Ends up

    Racing all over the globe

    Raking in the money for Bernie, but

    Always making me ask, are

    Ratings so important, and am

    I prepared to watch a sport where one team in particular gets away with cheating?

    Do they really think cheating is still an

    Enjoyable part of the

    Sport (if it ever was in the first place)?

    Ever only one answer to this: NO!

    Racing is in the team’s blood, and with the championships,

    Victories have come in big and small levels of success, but not without controversy, or an

    Entertaining argument, e.g. in Belgium 1998, when

    A certain Michael Schumacher tried to win the race,

    Before driving into the back of DC, who was about to go a lap down.

    Into this new(ish) era of the FIA, with the same old stories:

    Great racing ruined by

    Ghastly decisions made by a select few,

    Eager to manipulate the

    Result of a championship, just go back to 2007 with McLaren. They lost all their

    Points after allegedly copying Ferrari’s car designs, no thanks to one of McLaren’s Chief

    Engineers Mike Coughlan, who obviously left the team to avoid further

    Negative press. He used to work for

    Arrows before they became defunct in the summer of 2002. Only

    Last autumn we found out about the

    Team orders scandal (or in this case race fixing) in Singapore 2008. Do

    You still want to watch a sport that stabs itself in the back with inconsistent decisions?

  26. “cat was out of the house”
    LOL Mclaren is always smarter than Ferrari.

    Next time we´ll hear over the radio “the double pepperoni one please” and suddenly one of the two Ferrari drivers lets the other one go through

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