Ferrari before the World Motorsports Council

This is ridiculous. Next year is gonna be so flukey! In my view whoever wins the championship next year won't deserve it (dependent on if their team chooses to regularly use team orders).
 
PeterJB
I think that's their subtle way of saying "We're going to use team orders
in every race because we can"
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Or saying "finally people realise what we did wasn't anything new"?

Lets conveniently forget Red Bull's team orders this year....
 
Whether you consider it a direct "team order" is irrelevant, the point is Ferrari are not the only ones and have never been the only ones to use team orders or display some favouritism of one driver over another.
If it comes to it, McLaren, Red Bull...everyone will use them.

We had clear indications this year that Vettel had some favour in Red Bull, the worst being when they quickly blamed Webber for Turkey...

Ferrari are obviously happy because they obviously don't like being portrayed as villains for using team orders when they are not the only ones. They are just the most visible and famous for using them, but its not fair to single them out for criticism.
But some people clearly want to listen to their bias rather than think about it reasonably. So I don't look forward to yet more "Ferrari are smug", "Ferrari can cheat without penalty", etc comments for the next few months...

If anyone is smug right now, its all the other teams as they can now use team orders without fear of being portrayed as villains as Ferrari are now.
 
Well... we're pretty sure RBR use them... just not so obviously... the big question is... McLaren? Will they use team orders openly or still play it straight?
 
See one David Coulthard and one Heikki Kovalainen. McLaren are not afraid to use team orders. All teams will use them when they feel its necessary. Very rarely would a team do it completely without logic.
 
I don't think that this will make a huge difference to next years chamionship. For team orders to be useful, both drivers need to be together on track - this past season, it rarely happened for Ferrari and McLaren, and Dietrich Matter... (the head of Red Bull) openly said he would rather lose the championship than use team orders - so I dont think a rule change will alter his stance much.

We are more likely to see team orders when two cars wind up on different pit strategies for some reason and one car is behind, but much faster than the other. We have all seen this happen plenty of times and screamed at the TV to get the slower guy to let his team mate past.
 
The head of Red Bull openly said that when finger boy was behind and it appeared that Webber had a better chance at the title. I doubt he would be singing the same tune if the roles had been reversed.
 
lmanion
I doubt he would be singing the same tune if the roles had been reversed.
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Why not? Vettel would have been in a better position if he and Webber were in each other's position championship-wise ahead of the final races. There wouldn't be any need for team orders if Vettel was already in front. I could undestand your scepticism in the case of a role reversal if the championship had played out in a way that saw Vettel ahead of Webber all season and Mateschitz saying team orders would not be used, but it would have actually favoured Red Bull to use team orders in the final two races if they wanted Vettel to win. They didn't, and yet he still came from behind.
 
Yes but if that had of been the case ie: Webber behind but making a run at Vettel with Webber in front and Vettel second in Brazil I have no doubts that there would have been orders for Webber to let Vettel past. That is going on your hypothetical situation of the roles being reversed.
Its fairly obvious that to Red Bull or at least its owner and his representative Marko that the 'right' driver winning the title was Vettel and that was obvious as early in the season as Turkey.
 
I'm pretty sure Red Bull wouldn't have cared who won so long as it was a Red Bull driver. They lost the 2009 title because Webber and Vettel were too busy taking points out of one another instead of mounting a charge at Jenson Button, and they said before this year that anything less than the World Championship was unacceptable. People like Helmut Marko would have played the game, but Mateschitz and Horner made it pretty clear that they would do whatever the drivers decided was best.
 
You can choose to ignore the rediculous cases of favouritism, but they did indeed happen. There was no good reason for the wing controversey to happen or for the team to start a blame game immediately after a race on an incident which was (as far as everyone else was concerned) 50/50 blame. Red Bull can pretend what they like in the press, but its been made clear who they preferred to win.
 
While the favouritism existed, I think people are making too much of it. I was watching a replay of the Istanbul incident the other day, and it hit me - it wasn't really anybody's fault. Given the position of the cars relative to one another, Mark Webber could see a lot more of Sebastian Vettel than Vettel could see of Webber at the time of the crash. It was a bit like Petrov and Hulkenberg colliding on the grid in Japan; if you have to assign blame, then one person might be more responsible than the other, but that doesn't mean the other person is exonerated. In that sense, I think Helmut Marko could, on a certain level, be considered the voice of reason. Vettel could not see Webber as soon as the cars drew alongside one another, because the high sides of the cockpit combined with the HANS device that prevents too much head movement both mean that Vettel was blind. He was, in some respects, running on faith when he passed Webber (just as any driver making a pass is). He certainly could have handled the pass better, but then so could Webber. In fact, given the information available to each driver at the time, Webber probably could have done more to avoid Vettel than Vettel could have done to avoid Webber. That said, Marko's manipulations came to the fore shortly thereafter.

I'm not denying that there were factions in play behind the scenes at Red Bull - but I don't think they subversively decided the championship. Christian Horner seems like a pretty reasonable guy, and his explanation of why Vettel received the wing in Silverstone made sense to me. Vettel was consistently faster than Webber in every sector in every session that weekend. He represented the best chance at victory, and Silverstone was the halfway point of the season. Red Bull lost their chance at the 2009 World Championship because Webber and Vettel were always too busy taking points out of one another than they were at building a campaign agianst Jenson Button. There was always going to be a point this season where Red Bull had to pick one driver regardless of how much they may have preferred staying out of it and letting the drivers decide on the track. I also think that Mark Webber handled the incident in Silverstone extremely poorly, playing the victim card straight away when he should have sat down and tried to work things out.
 
Where did anyone say Red Bull's favouritism affected the championship directly? All thats been said is that Red Bull are hardly the cleanest of clean teams and are as likely to use team orders as any other team, including Ferrari. The only difference is Ferrari have a driver (Massa) who is completely outclassed by the other currently, so they have no reason to back Massa as he has not shown he can beat Alonso on a regular basis and hence make it a difficult decision.
Whereas Red Bull and McLaren have relatively close drivers which means they can't really back one driver solely over the other as they don't know what could happen in the following races.

Like I said, teams use team orders through logic. Only very rarely has a team used team orders to their own detriment. If you think a team will never use team orders even in quite obvious circumstances, you are living in dreamland. Red Bull actually said before Brazil and Abu Dhabi that if they were in a circumstance where the drivers could secure the championship with a team order, they would have done so. They did emphasise that they expected the drivers to work this out themselves and not require an order, but they would have intervened if necessary. Vettel even went on record saying he would do what needed to be done for the team.

As for Silverstone, its notable that Horner and Newey never discussed it with Webber before hand. Now what are you (and the rest of the world) going to think when the team tell you that Vettel's wing has broken and they are giving him yours? Supposedly (according to Red Bull) Webber didn't think there was any benefit to that front wing, even if it that was the case, the fact they didn't even tell Mark what they were doing and why speaks volumes about RBR's driver management....
 

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