OK I know i've only been posting on the F1 boards for about half an hour but I need to find out something. What are peoples views on this race....namely the controversial ending to it.
it shouldn't have happened, plain and simple. Them 7 points meant that Alonso would have had to finish 2nd in Abu Dhabi, so more pressure on him, and more chance of him to crash. Also, it could have changed the whole season entirely if Massa had won. He could still mathematically win the championship, and maybe give him the past courage to get racing for the championship. Statically it didn't change how the season ended, but if Alonso and Ferrari hadn't have done that, it would have given psychological boosts or wake up calls for the other drivers
The whole team orders thing? My view is that Alonso would have got past Massa anyway, and it was a bad call by Ferrari to give the coded message to Massa to let him through. Saying that, they did get reprimanded for it, and team orders are back this year, so it was a flawed rule in the first place.
Technically, we cannot prove it is a team order - after all, FIA did not take any action. However, we are not stupid. It was a blatant team order, and you could clearly see Felipe's frustration. I think that because Felipe was unhappy, he decided to make the team order as blatant as possible. He could have braked too early into the corner, or outbraked himself, but he let Fernando past in a way that let us know what was going on. In my opinion, it was not fair to Felipe, but in terms of the championship, it was the right decision to make. As Tiger says, Alonso was the faster driver and probably would have got past anyway. Team orders go on in F1 all the time. I think the whole incident is blown out of proportion - and is just another thing that that the British media can use to portray Alonso as a bad guy.
Bad time, right idea. Massa never really was in the championship, so Ferrari (who dont like losing) put all their eggs into one basket and let Fernando through, he therefore had more confidence to challenge the two better teams at the time. And if it wasnt for bad luck from the team in Abu Dhabi, it could have worked. As I said, it wasnt good, but it was essential
Jose Lorca, I agree with you about the British medias portrayal of Alonso, it's a disgrace in my opinion. They should respect drivers of all nationalities, but they don't. It was the same with Schumi back in the day. Sometimes it makes me ashamed to be British.
Personally, I think its very unfair of Ferrari to favour Alonso that early in the season, when mathematically Massa still had a perfectly good shot at the championship. If it was later in the season, and would have given Alonso the championship, I don't think Massa would have minded as much. You can clearly see he's furious about it. But equally I'm sure over the years other teams have used team orders, it just seems Ferrari always seem to be involved in the high profile cases, especially when Schumacher was involved. I don't feel team orders should be allowed in the sport, but how do you stop it? How do you stop a team having a private meeting at the beginning of the season, agreeing a codeword (it could even just be a fake fuel save setting) and agreeing to simply outbrake themselves or run wide. Nothing could ever be proved, so it has to be legal.
Thinking back to the podium after the race you can see that Massa was absolutely sick. Like DHCanary says it is impossible to police effectively against team orders so the sensible thing to do was abolish them.
Talking about Germany, I'm going to Germany 2011 (Nurburgring) at turn 7 Mainly to help me with my German A-Level
Make sure you listen to the German course commentary. I'm a German speaker myself, often check F1 news on German sites.
