Mosley Warns of Race Bans for Use of Team Orders

FIA president Max Mosley has warned Formula One's leading teams that could be banned for one race if they use team orders to manipulate the outcome of a Grand Prix next year.

Team orders were banned last month after the Formula One Commission met with all the team bosses in London.

Mosley said last month that the FIA plan to punish teams who use team orders in the manner that Ferrari did in the Austrian Grand Prix, when Brazilian Rubens Barrichello moved over to allow teammate Michael Schumacher to win on the final lap.

Mosley, head of Formula One's governing body the FIA, has said that a one-race ban is being put in place to punish any offenders in 2003.

"They would get a race suspension, but that would be a matter for the stewards and then on to the court of appeal if there was one," Mosley said of potential punishments in an interview with the ITV. "The most obvious thing would be a race suspension, depending on how serious the case was.

"That's why we don't have fixed penalties because it's very tempting to have them but then each case is different and there are often mitigating circumstances. To fix a race at the beginning of the season in favour of one driver is very different from fixing it at the end of the season when the Championship is at stake."

Ferrari and drivers Schumacher and Barrichello were given a $1 million fine for the Austria debacle.