I'm still pissed off that Lemond wasn't allowed to race Hinault in 1985.

Given someone got overtaken in the procession race it was a complete give away

I'm still pissed off that Lemond wasn't allowed to race Hinault in 1985.

I bet he was off his tits though at the time.

There have been two dull races this season so far, the first one and the most recent one. All you whinging ignorants obviously haven't seen the other races, which have all been full of entertainment – if you haven't even seen the races, why would anyone heed your "opinion"?

F1 is a team sport – incidents like this are despised by those that haven't realised it is a team sport. Same people probably find TdF a bit confusing too.

glen it is against the rules to give team orders as they have to race each other. If you mast call people ignorant at least learn the rules first or you look silly 🙄

F1 is a team sport – incidents like this are despised by those that haven't realised it is a team sport. Same people probably find TdF a bit confusing too.

Can you imagine the drivers getting together and saying 'Barachello hasn't had a win recently. He really needs one for his Sponsors etc' so lets let him win in Hungary'?

No. Its nothing like Tdf.

Junkyard, I do know the rules. I also know that you can't really enforce the rules because they don't fit the reality.

F1 is nothing like TdF – in the Tour different team members have different roles to perform – domestiques, sprinters, climbers and the leader.

In F1 each team has two drivers but each one *should* be racing with the same single goal – to win as many races as they can.

I was looking forward to a good battle for P1 with Alonso pressing Massa and some exciting overtake/crash or whatever. Instead we were served up a pathetic slowing to allow him past. Most disappointed and, as has been said already, this was only the second boring race this year – the only exciting thing to happen was Vettel being caught napping off the start.

On balance, I think it turned out better for the season. Having Alonso back in the title race improves an already dramatic situation. Five drivers right in there, three of them already WDCs, plus one who def will be one day (Vettel) and one who (I think) really deserves results (Webber).

Plus I love all the controversy and heroes and villains stuff.

Since the alternative (to Massa yielding) might have been the two of them senselessly taking each other out then I'll take what we got.

might have been the two of them senselessly taking each other out then I'll take what we got.

Why? When Webber and Vettel took each other out it was much more exciting than yesterday's fayre.

Racing should be done on the track, not from the team manager's intercom.

F1 is a team sport – incidents like this are despised by those that haven't realised it is a team sport. Same people probably find TdF a bit confusing too.

Don't be so patronising. Plenty of long time F1 fans disagree.

I'm pretty sure that Ferrari had a look at the points of Massa and Alonso, realised that since even Alonso is a relatively long shot now, they had to apply team orders to stand a decent chance of him winning the WC.

My real issue is that while it may not be 100% the case (because there is some question over fuel saving strategies being used), Red Bull and McLaren aren't using team orders or at least aren't using them in a way that massively affects the championship. I suspect that in reality, what has happened here may actually make it harder for Alonso to win the WC now – Ferrari are going to be subjected to scruitiny to the point of finding it very difficult to do the same thing again so if Massa can get in front again it's going to be hard for them to play any kind of tactical game.

they should ban the use of radios, that would then make sure that any team orders would have to be done prior to the race and not during! there's no reason to have radios so get rid of them.

They'd just give messages via pit board.

Ferrari, however, insisted the incident was "a driver decision" and said no instructions were given to their drivers.

This is what winds me up – no-one believes that for a second yet they feed us the crap and expect us to accept it.

They'd just give messages via pit board.

If I were Massa I would ignore it and claim not to have seen it. A bit more difficult to ignore your race engineer apologising for giving you the instruction down your headset.

That'd be as silly as claiming that Ferrari didn't use team orders this weekend…

ban pit boards – not hard. next you'll say – the engineer was waving furiosly using semaphore

They'd find a way 🙂

I thought Vettel's crashing into the side of Weber was stupid and pointless. Exciting wasn't really in it for me. Team orders certainly are going on in other teams, but they have the PR a bit more sorted. The major difference at the moment is it isn't easy to pick your number one in Red Bull or McLaren – but there will come a point in the season when both of those teams will be doing exactly the same thing as Ferrari just did.

The major difference at the moment is it isn't easy to pick your number one in Red Bull or McLaren

But that's really the point – where the drivers are still very much in it, you shouldn't be deliberately hamstringing one of them. THAT's what people are really objecting to. If Massa had been let win, he'd be less than a win away from Alonso which at this stage in the season is hardly out of it…

Bernie Ecclestone and co have instructed the teams to create incidents like this ferrari one to add some controversy to an otherwise very very dull/pointless sport. It gives people something to talk about.

Don't reckon.

People like it when drivers have big rivalries – even better when they really seem to dislike eachother. If you were going to orchestrate/fix things to add spice to the sport, that's what you'd do.

People get hacked off with being taken for mugs and being told that black is white.

I agree that Massa was within distance of Alonso, but I disagree that he was seriously in contention for the Championship, which really only Alonso has any hope of winning for Ferrari.

At the start of the season I was very confident that Alonso would win the WDC this year – I still think he is the one to watch, especially if McLaren can't find a bit more speed and RBR keep fighting each other.

I agree actually – I still reckon that on balance, that Alonso's the best driver in F1 at the moment – though his emotional responses this season in particlar are making me question that to some extent – BUT, again, Massa is still in it. While Alonso is Ferrari's best shot the general consensus still seems to be that Ferrari should play fair and keep things equal until things are a lot more clear cut.

I thought Vettel's crashing into the side of Weber was stupid and pointless. Exciting wasn't really in it for me.

🙄

Team orders certainly are going on in other teams, but they have the PR a bit more sorted

You mean the PR of actually overtaking your teammate under race conditions.

It leaves a bad taste but anyone who thinks that all of the other teams wouldn't do the same thing in the same circumstances is deluding themselves. Also there's plenty of other recent cases of team orders that nobody's getting themselves worked up over. IMO this one seems a lot worse than it might if we didn't get to hear the team radio transmissions.

Why the rolleyes, m_f?

Junkyard – no, the PR of claiming that they don't have team orders – they might not at the moment, but the day will come for each team. Ferrari's day was yesterday, but the others will do the same – probably they will make a better job of covering it up though.

McLaren aren't doing it. Neither are Red Bull (at least not to such an extent). At least not yet because it's too early and clearly unfair.

McLaren have the third fastest car – you could argue that they need to back one of their drivers now as they're likely to be caught and passed over the rest of the season

Red Bull are behind despite having the fastest car. You could argue that they need to make sure they get all the points they can right now especially as Ferrari seem to be making a comeback.

It's basically like WWF isn't it?

If McLaren were in the same situation, they would be doing it.

If McLaren were in the same situation, they would be doing it.

Hmm – they didn't do it in 2007 when they handed Kimi the title due to their rookie taking points from a double world champion!

McLaran did it in 2008 at Hockenheim.

all manufacturers do it and all have done so many times

PAST TEAM ORDERS INCIDENTS
Jerez 1997: McLaren order David Coulthard to let Mika Hakkinen past to win
Australia 1998: McLaren order Coulthard to let Hakkinen past to win
Belgium 1998: Jordan order Ralf Schumacher not to race Damon Hill for the lead
Austria 2002: Ferrari order Rubens Barrichello to let Michael Schumacher past to win; he does so on the run to the flag
Monaco 2007: McLaren order Lewis Hamilton not to challenge Fernando Alonso for the race win
Brazil 2007: Ferrari manipulate Felipe Massa's pit stop toput Kimi Raikkonen into the lead so he can win the world title
Germany 2008: Heikki Kovalainen lets McLaren team-mate Hamilton through so he can win the race following an error in team tactics
Singapore 2008: Renault order Nelson Piquet to crash to cause a safety car period that helps Alonso win
China 2008: Raikkonen hands Massa second place behind Hamilton so he is in a better championship position heading into the final race
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/8855382.stm

Yep, but nobody does it as much or as blatently as Ferrari. For the record in Germany 2 years ago Hamilton then passed 2 more cars to take the win finishing more than 12 seconds ahead of Heikki. Not quite the same as Alonso being gifted a win when he clearly wasn't any faster:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/8109556.stm

I can think of 30 million reasons why Fernando Alonso should have been made to overtake Massa.

For the record Kov couldn't race his way out of a paperbag. Let alone in a car that was gifted to him. Theres abit of a difference between Massa and Kov here.

I'm sure Ron Dennis, Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds can think of Several hundred million reasons why Ferrari should be punished for bringing the sport into disrepute.

TJ, I hope you're trolling but…

Jerez 1997: McLaren order David Coulthard to let Mika Hakkinen past to win

An inconsequential move that was part of an agreement between Williams and McLaren to allow JV to win the WC in return for not taking the risk of racing McLaren. I agree FWIW that it was questionable making/asking DC to allow MH through but as above, it had no material value on the WC.

Australia 1998: McLaren order Coulthard to let Hakkinen past to win

That's the one where the team c0cked up and if they hadn't MH would have won so since it wasn't his fault they asked DC to give him the place back. Very different to what happened in Germany

Belgium 1998: Jordan order Ralf Schumacher not to race Damon Hill for the lead

Again, very different. Two cars in the team's first win/1-2 and they didn't want to take the risk of the two cars crashing in the very bad conditions. Team orders, yes but they didn't put the cars in a situation where Hill was in front of Schumacher – he'd got there on merit. If it had been the other way around and they'd asked for RS to allow DH through, that I would have taken issue with.

Austria 2002: Ferrari order Rubens Barrichello to let Michael Schumacher past to win; he does so on the run to the flag

Well we all know about this. To make it worse, Barrichello had been faster than MS all weekend too.

Monaco 2007: McLaren order Lewis Hamilton not to challenge Fernando Alonso for the race win

As per Spa 98

Brazil 2007: Ferrari manipulate Felipe Massa's pit stop toput Kimi Raikkonen into the lead so he can win the world title

Actually I don't really like that either but at least everyone knows it's going to happen and Massa was out of the hunt for the title

Germany 2008: Heikki Kovalainen lets McLaren team-mate Hamilton through so he can win the race following an error in team tactics

Similar to Australia again.

Singapore 2008: Renault order Nelson Piquet to crash to cause a safety car period that helps Alonso win

That's a completely different thing…

China 2008: Raikkonen hands Massa second place behind Hamilton so he is in a better championship position heading into the final race

Ditto Brazil 07

If you can't see the difference, I worry about you. If you can but simply disagree, well fair enough.

Why the rolleyes, m_f?

Because I think you are arguing your point for the sake of it – stupid, pointless or whatever – it was an example of two drivers fighting for position on the track because they were ALLOWED to by their team. If you can't enjoy an incident like that then what do you find interesting about the sport?

I'll say one thing. Away from the Corporate-speak yet again on Top Gear Hamilton showed his utter passion with fast cars.

He always comes across as though racing is a hobby/a joy rather than a job. Even on a bad bay!

Clubber – the detail may be different but th effect is the same – one driver let another past without defending their position. No moral difference. Its still team orders to decide the race results

its interesting how divided the pundits are – have a read of the BBC site