I think it will be very interesting on what vettel was saying towards the end, "if" and "when" the offcial season review DVD comes out.
I haven't read that many comments assuming the Vettel/Webber situation would have ended with a crash. I did hear Christian Horner say that it would have ended in a crash, but like most things that come out of that oily person's mouth, that was complete rubbish. Obviously Eddie Jordan agreed with Horner, and even tried to change the subject, while expressing his view that he didn't even know why anyone was even discussing the issue.
I have no problems with what Red Bull did, or tried to do. They wanted to maximise points for the team and not risk crashing, so I completely understand their decision. Webber ignored the team orders anyway, so it's not like we were denied any action on the track.
I enjoyed Damon Hill putting Horner on the spot on the F1 forum, people want to see proper racing not something contrived, though personally I have no problem with team orders, it seemed a bit unnecessary today given Vettels huge lead.
I think either way you cut it the decision to invoke team orders was a very timid call from Horner in many ways. If you take the approach that Horner did it to make sure both cars finished well that shows an astounding lack of faith in your drivers to be able to race cleanly and be able to overtake and defend without crashing. The other approach that he felt the points they currently had outweighed the risk of the drivers crashing is another pretty pathetic excuse in my opinion because if Vettel had DNF then he still would of been 74 points clear of Alonso, does Horner really have such little confidence in Vettel that he does not believe Vettel could defend that? In terms of constructors if both Webber and Vettel crashed out RB would of had a gap of 71 points over Mclaren and 124 point gap over Ferrari, again does he really think they could not defend that? I have no problem at all with the use of team order whether they are legal or illegal if it makes sense, I thought at the time and still think now that Ferrari did the right thing last year in Germany. However the issue I have with Red Bull's use of team order is that it is hypocritical for one, Horner was preening last year smugly saying that RB would never use them and that they were in F1 for the sport. Maybe he just meant RB would never use them to benefit Webber. RB's use of them just seem so unnecessary and cowardly.
I can understand why people would say "he has a huge points gap why do this?" This is Ferrari and Alonso we are talking about, they're already doing team orders by leaving Massa out to slow people down so he can pull a big enough gap.
It's a bit silly really, and probably cost Massa 4th. They should have noticed by now that fresh Pirelli will overtake worn Pirelli within a few corners. It barely holds up the guy trying to overtake. Having said that, Massa's slow driving isn't doing him any favours either.
Rubbish, if ferrari now have the fastest car, as seems quite plausible after today, RBR could end up doing a brawn and Vettel be overtaken, the safe option for the manager is to minimise the damage points wise, only an idiot would do otherwise. People can whine and whingfe that the event was spoiled but they don't have £50million + riding on it.
Can somebody explain this quote from Horner? Did Red Bull not try and get Vettel ahead of Webber, not tell him to hold station?
btw, may i remember: Turkey 2009 (where Vettel got the comand to "hold the position" in the last laps), after the race MW: "We knew that there was no point of us two smashing into each other with five laps to go, so we just brought the cars home really. Jenson was down the road, so it was a stalemate. We had everyone else covered, so it was a great day for the team to get second and third." so in 2009 it was ok for Mark because he was in front.......
That really pissed me off. How Damon Hill of all people, could sit there just a few feet away from Jordan and Horner and say that is beyond me. [video=youtube;ykI39M27y10]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykI39M27y10[/video]
If you can find that, GREAT! Found something on wikipedia: Although Vettel closed the gap to Webber to just 0.7 seconds as the chequered flag fell, there were no significant positional changes in the final laps as Button cruised to his sixth win from the first seven races, a feat only matched by Alberto Ascari, Juan Manuel Fangio, Jim Clark and Michael Schumacher – who all won the World Championship after achieving this feat. Button also became the first Englishman to score record four consecutive victories since Nigel Mansell in 1992, who too went on to win the title that season. And from the Official website: Q: When the race unfolded in the way it did was there ever a thought of team orders? CH: No team orders. Both drivers had new engines and very hot temperatures so the last few laps they turned the revs down a little bit, as Jenson did. Sebastian wanted to have a go for fastest lap - he tried but missed it by one tenth. Q: Mark, a great result for you. More fuel on board at the start of the race and a two stop strategy compared with your team-mate’s three stop strategy. Talk us through that. Mark Webber: Well, it was a very good afternoon for me. The first stint I knew I had to try and hang in there as long as I could and that worked out pretty well. I managed also to go a lap longer and save a bit of fuel as well. That really opened up me going away from the rest of field. I knew Sebastian’s strategy as well, so I knew I would have a chance to have a sniff at him as well to get another position. I knew the podium was pretty much taken, it was just a question of whom out of Sebastian and myself would get the second place behind this guy who was on another planet. I knew the second stint was crucial for me and I had to push really, really hard as usual as all the drivers are doing in the race but when someone is on a different strategy it is invisible to see them obviously and it turned out well for us. My engineer kept me in the loop with what was happening and I did enough damage in the middle stint to be able to jump Sebastian and at the end it was okay, we just turned the engine down and brought the car home. Q: You were asked late in the race by your team not to pass Mark. Your thoughts on that? SV: They did not tell me not to pass Mark. They just said ‘Mark is faster.’ Similar to what he did we just turned the engine down and just drove the car home. I mean if you start from pole you want to win. If you lose the lead already in the first lap it is not so good and you just see that someone has much quicker pace. It is not that nice to see and obviously then we lost because of the strategy the position to Mark, so in the end I was third. Of course I wasn’t that happy with that and just kept pushing to the end. Obviously both of us turned the engines down but still I would rather go fast the last couple of laps and enjoy rather than just going around without any sense. Sounds like team orders to me...
The fans want to see racing, ideally of the full blooded type we saw between Hamilton & Massa in the last couple of corners yesterday. Whatever the rules say, I think we all get irritated when we hear messages that make it quite clear our wishes are being ignored. Ultimately, it must be in F1's interests that the fans get what they want, even if it does mean a rule outlawing team orders & upsetting the teams. However, I do think there's a qualitative difference between being told to hold station as yesterday between the 2 Red Bulls and even more so between Hill & Schumacher R at Spa, when track conditions were lethal and the Alonso/Massa incident in 2010, which involved an artificial swapping of places.
It's inbuilt into F1, you cant stop team orders... F1 is a team sport, just like football, just like Tour de France and just like cricket. It isn't the 100m sprint were the athlete is the only person out there.
http://www.formula1.com/news/headlines/2009/6/9472.html http://www.formula1.com/news/interviews/2009/6/9473.html Oh the scandal!!!!!! Q: When the race unfolded in the way it did was there ever a thought of team orders? CH: No team orders. Both drivers had new engines and very hot temperatures so the last few laps they turned the revs down a little bit, as Jenson did. Sebastian wanted to have a go for fastest lap - he tried but missed it by one tenth. Q: Mark, a great result for you. More fuel on board at the start of the race and a two stop strategy compared with your team-mate’s three stop strategy. Talk us through that. Mark Webber: Well, it was a very good afternoon for me. The first stint I knew I had to try and hang in there as long as I could and that worked out pretty well. I managed also to go a lap longer and save a bit of fuel as well. That really opened up me going away from the rest of field. I knew Sebastian’s strategy as well, so I knew I would have a chance to have a sniff at him as well to get another position. I knew the podium was pretty much taken, it was just a question of whom out of Sebastian and myself would get the second place behind this guy who was on another planet. I knew the second stint was crucial for me and I had to push really, really hard as usual as all the drivers are doing in the race but when someone is on a different strategy it is invisible to see them obviously and it turned out well for us. My engineer kept me in the loop with what was happening and I did enough damage in the middle stint to be able to jump Sebastian and at the end it was okay, we just turned the engine down and brought the car home. Q: You were asked late in the race by your team not to pass Mark. Your thoughts on that? SV: They did not tell me not to pass Mark. They just said ‘Mark is faster.’ Similar to what he did we just turned the engine down and just drove the car home. I mean if you start from pole you want to win. If you lose the lead already in the first lap it is not so good and you just see that someone has much quicker pace. It is not that nice to see and obviously then we lost because of the strategy the position to Mark, so in the end I was third. Of course I wasn’t that happy with that and just kept pushing to the end. Obviously both of us turned the engines down but still I would rather go fast the last couple of laps and enjoy rather than just going around without any sense. Sounds like team orders to me in Webber's favour, with Sebastian being the quicker driver in the end, so Vettel haters can piss off thinking they been hard done by. It's unfair, Mark can ignore team orders but Sebastian can't, not a fair playing field, Mark Webber is a disgrace to the RBR team.
