How a 16-year-old wound still haunts Ferrari

The 2002 Austrian Grand Prix is one of the most infamous in Formula 1 history, and on the evidence of last weekend's German GP it left scars that still bother Ferrari to this day.

The race at the then-A1 Ring will forever be remembered for its final few seconds, when race leader Rubens Barrichello slowed to let Michael Schumacher take a victory he didn't really need on his romp to a world championship he would seal by July. Incidentally, last weekend was the 16-year anniversary of that feat.

The drivers, and Ferrari, were resoundingly booed by the fans post-race, leading to Schumacher's embarrassingly half-hearted gesture to swap places with Barrichello on the podium. At least that gave the FIA something to punish Ferrari for, as at the time team orders were legal, and rubbing your dominance in the faces of the fans was hardly an official offence!

But since that day, Ferrari has been incredibly sensitive to the delicate issue of team orders, and it proved last weekend that even with an entirely different management regime in charge, it's still spooked by such scenarios.

The irony of its latest team-orders situation flaring up at Hockenheim cannot have been lost on anyone, either. Eight years after Felipe Massa was told "Fernando is faster than you - can you confirm you understood that message?" in the 2010 German Grand Prix - when team orders were banned, partly as a result of Austria '02 - Ferrari had its cars in the wrong order again, and a disgruntled lead driver getting impatient on the radio.

An early pitstop for Kimi Raikkonen in Sunday's race enabled him to vault from third to the lead when the first round of stops cycled through, with his 11 laps on fresh tyres getting him ahead of Valtteri Bottas and team-mate Sebastian Vettel.

This was an open goal for Ferrari that would be easy to explain, with the 'different strategies' argument a straightforward case

Vettel was then stuck behind Raikkonen for 13 laps, during which time he made his irritation clear about being held up, calling the situation "silly", claiming he could lap "more than a second" faster, and asking "What are you waiting for?" as he complained about his rear tyres overheating.

He was probably as confused as everyone else about why Ferrari didn't take decisive action much sooner. This one was an open goal that would be easy to explain, with the 'different strategies' argument a straightforward case to make for justifiably swapping the order of the cars.

Even Raikkonen didn't seem to understand what all the coded-message fuss was about, when senior Ferrari engineer Jock Clear got on the radio following Vettel's persistent badgering to deliver the following message.

Clear: "Kimi, this is Jock. You're aware we need to look after tyres, both cars need to look after tyres, and you two are on different strategies. Your strategies are slightly different and we'd like you not to hold up Seb. Thank you."

Raikkonen: "Can you be direct, I don't know, what do you want me to do?"

Clear: "Losing as little time as possible, obviously, where you can. Seb is capable of going quicker but he's hurting his tyres, and you are as well. We need to look after them."

Raikkonen: "You want me to let him go? Please, just tell me."

Clear: "A-firm. A-firm Kimi. Yes, please."

Raikkonen: "OK."

Why Ferrari was so afraid to make the call that Raikkonen was waiting for - a definitive instruction - isn't clear. Very few people now at the top at Ferrari were part of the Jean Todt-led superteam that took so much criticism back in 2002, and most of the key players in the Massa/Alonso saga from '10 have moved on since then.

The pitwall surely must have seen this coming when Raikkonen was called in for his early stop, which allowed him to emerge just in front of the recovering Lewis Hamilton, and pull away thanks to his fresher tyres. Even at that stage, or building up to Vettel's stop when it became clear he would rejoin in second place, why not explain the situation to Raikkonen then, and make sure that by the time the two cars were together on track, it wasn't even a problem in the first place?

There is a wider issue at play here as well, with Raikkonen becoming frustrated on occasions so far in 2018

There is understood to be a wider issue at play here as well, with Raikkonen becoming frustrated with a lack of clarity in terms of communication from the pitwall on occasions so far in 2018. Perhaps Sunday's episode was just a result of him reaching breaking point, hence the use of "Can you be direct..." in the exchange with Clear.

The contrast between how Ferrari and Mercedes handled team-orders scenarios in the same grand prix is fascinating. Ferrari's decision was arguably easier to make, given it simply wanted to get its original race leader back in front after its second car had benefitted from an earlier pitstop that - in the words of Clear on the radio to Raikkonen - put the cars on "different strategies".

Mercedes' decision to call off the fight between Hamilton and Bottas in the closing stages, when the latter had yet again lost a potential victory due to the timing of a safety car, must have been much tougher to make.

It's hard not to sympathise with Bottas, who has spent much of his time at Mercedes being told to be tougher in battle, and then when he showed signs of doing that, he was effectively told 'Not now!'. But Mercedes was firm and decisive, as well as apologetic, and its Finnish driver obliged to play the team game.

Whether you believe Mercedes' claims that it would have made the same call if the cars were the other way around, and that the decision was based purely on protecting a one-two finish that had come about through some good fortune (and impressive speed from its drivers when the conditions were difficult), is a different matter. But given that both of F1's championship-challenging teams had decisions to make that ultimately benefitted their lead driver, only one fronted up to the situation and didn't shy away from making a tough call. The other seemed afraid to do so.

There is a counter-argument here. It was obvious to any regular F1 follower what Ferrari's initial messages to Raikkonen about being on a different strategy were all about. We hear it time and time again when team-mates end up on the same piece of track, and a not-very-coded message about different strategies, or an instruction to the car ahead that his team-mate is quicker or on fresher tyres, is played. We know what it means - the team wants the driver in front to stay out of the way of the quicker car behind.

Raikkonen has been around F1 long enough to know what those first few messages from Ferrari were getting at. Even if it's not a topic that's discussed in pre-race meetings (surely, it should be), any driver should know that if he starts being told to not hold his faster team-mate up, the implication is to achieve that by actively getting out of his way.

Raikkonen, for whatever reason, wanted Ferrari to say it loud and clear, with millions of witnesses listening in. It could simply be that he didn't want to trade the clean air he was running in for the dirty air Vettel had at that moment, particularly as any ambitions he had of executing a mammoth 53-lap stint to complete the race on just one pitstop would be hindered by a loss of downforce if he ran as the trailing car.

That would explain why his first message back to the team after letting Vettel through was: "Let's ask him to push. Tell him to go full speed. I am losing too much otherwise."

But maybe it was just that he's out of contract at the end of the season and hasn't won a race since 2013, and the memory of two wins that could have been in '17 - Monaco, when he lost out on strategy to Vettel; and Hungary, where he dutifully sat behind his team-mate's ailing car - are still fresh.

Whatever Raikkonen's reasons were, he was within his rights to question why his team was making such a mess of what was such a clear-cut situation. Perhaps those old wounds will never heal, and Ferrari will forever be haunted by the controversies from its past.