Subscribe

Sign up for free

  • Get quick access to your favorite articles

  • Manage alerts on breaking news and favorite drivers

  • Make your voice heard with article commenting.

Autosport Plus

Discover premium content
Subscribe
Autosport Plus

Why F1 must celebrate team orders

Mercedes has tried to be coy about what were actually admirable tactics with Valtteri Bottas at Monza. The spectre of Austria 2002 is still causing unnecessary embarrassment about a key element of motorsport

To paralyse a Formula 1 team with fear, put those in charge into a position where they must impose team orders. The result will be ham-fisted attempts to look like no team orders exist, followed by all sorts of verbal contortions and semantic arguments as they try to convince the rest of the world that something that very obviously happened did not.

Why? Because team orders at their mildest are unavoidable and at their most extreme are blindingly obvious. It's part of motorsport, and F1's regulations actively encourage it. To name but one rule, each team has a single pit box so that inevitably means there are times where you must favour one driver over the other with stop timing.

Previous article Raikkonen's Ferrari exit ends a great F1 fallacy
Next article Williams Formula 1 team 'blinded' by its 2014/15 success

Sign up for free

  • Get quick access to your favorite articles

  • Manage alerts on breaking news and favorite drivers

  • Make your voice heard with article commenting.

Autosport Plus

Discover premium content
Subscribe