Gary Anderson: managing Hamilton and Rosberg

If there was one thing that Ferrari was good at, it was running clear number-one and number-two cars.

Very seldom did it have to convene a board meeting when its two cars were running together to decide who was going to win.

In reality, we all hated that approach, but as we've seen over the last few years, if you don't have a black-and-white set of rules, Sunday afternoon can become a bit of a nightmare.

There was rarely any doubt about team orders during Ferrari's best years © LAT

Team-mates have been racing each other - and on the odd occasion running into each other - since motor racing began. But we only really pay attention when it happens at the front.

There are many examples - Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna, Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso, Alan Jones and Carlos Reutemann - and the most recent to come to blows in a very public dispute were Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber in last year's Malaysian Grand Prix.

Now, it's the turn of the Mercedes drivers, Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton. Or should that be Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg? If this was Ferrari, or even Mercedes under Ross Brawn, there would certainly be no dispute as to which order they should be listed in.

But right now, I don't think anyone knows who comes first.

I spoke with Paddy Lowe at the first pre-season test at Jerez and asked him how the team was going to handle two drivers at the same stage in their careers, with exactly the same hunger to win races and championships.

His reply was that it would be a pleasure to have this problem. Well, it's right here, right now.

Toto Wollf said after the British Grand Prix that Mercedes was going to run exactly the same strategy with both cars. If that's really true, then what happened in Hungary?

There, they both had very different strategies and that's what led to Lewis being asked by the team to move over and let Nico through.

Are those calling the shots on the pitwall mad or something? Why would Lewis do that?

He is racing with 21 other cars. Moving over to let one through, even though he is your team-mate, to allow him to push on before his extra stop and be on fresh tyres at the end of the race when Lewis would be on well-worn rubber, would be crazy.

Congratulations to Lewis for sticking by his guns and not doing so. If Nico was fast enough, he needed to overtake Lewis. All a team can ask is that the two drivers respect each other.

If one takes the other off, then it'll be into the headmaster's office with the door closed. Now that's where Ross would really come in handy.

A team, no matter how hard it tries, will never be able to run two cars in identical trim or give them identical opportunities. So along the way, a system needs to be created to try to be as fair as possible to both.

The teams I have worked with were never in the limelight as prominently as Red Bull has been over the last few years, or Mercedes is now.

Hamilton 'celebrates' with Ricciardo after the Hungarian Grand Prix © XPB

But the way I used to try to address this problem was to sit down with the drivers before the season started, and look at the race schedule.

The first thing would be that we'd pick each driver's home race. So it would be Hamilton at Silverstone and Rosberg in Germany, and we would go through the season trying to alternate the priority races for each driver.

If everyone agreed to it, then off we would go to the first race. If anything cropped up, the driver who was on that list to have the priority at that race would get it. In reality, the other driver was his number two that weekend.

I always felt this was fair as it was created before the season started and it alternated between the two drivers. Then, late in the season, if one driver was in a better championship position, the discussion could be re-opened.

However, Lewis doesn't do himself any favours. He had just driven a fantastic battling race from the pitlane, did a quick 360 at Turn 2 on his first lap and still finished third.

Yet in the cool-down room and on the podium, he looked like the most miserable person in Hungary.

Daniel Ricciardo had just won his second grand prix and he was smiling from ear to ear. Lewis just didn't join in the fun - he looked like the kid that nobody wanted to play with at school, so he went and stood in the corner of the playground on his own.

Please, someone with influence take him by the hand and give him some much-needed advice.