dog bites man

 

Obscene that Ferrari should get away with this, $100,000 fine is not even a slap in the wrist for them. What message does this send to the other teams.
It will be interesting to see what happens to Red Bull or McLaren if they find themselves in a similar situation in the last races of the season. Will they sacrifice $100K to win the championship - no brainer really.

 

IIRC Red Bull found themselves in this situation a couple of weeks ago and between them they took themselves out of the race.

So Ferrari avoid that and get fined for it.
Is it still a "team" sport?
Is Massa - much as I like him - not paid for this?

F1 rulemakers arse it up again

 

What it does do is indicate that a similar situation is not to the spirit of the law.

Problem the stewards have got with this is that the rules say that a team cannot tell a driver to sacrifice a position to benefit another driver (can't remember the exact phrase used in this case). Massa states that he decided to let Alonso through which is still perfectly legal (driver made the decision not the team even though we all know the letter of the law was adhered to based on radio calls during the race)

This is a mild slap on the wrist that doesn't set any major presidence but also gives an indication that "we will properly #### you up if you try this $hit again"

 

For Any team they should do what's best to ensure that they have the no 1 car next season. So if that means moving the drivers around so be it.

 

Obscene?
Have you taken a look outside, in the real world, lately?

 

It's a team sport so I agree in general principle the team should be able to give team orders. However I also accept the fact that the rules say that teams cannot give team orders. It's a stupid uninforcable law and should be revoked with a certain "don't feck about" rule

 

The rule says something like "team orders which affect the outcome of the race are prohibited". Which is amazingly terse for an F1 rule, without any qualification of what exactly constitutes team orders. Yes they can say Massa made the decision at the time, but clearly the scenario would have been discussed before the race, and may even be in Massa's contract. So what's a "team order" in that context?

 

Not sure what you're trying to say Gareth, perhaps you can be a bit more specific ?

 

Is it really a team sport? It's not like football where there's only a team championship, or like LeMans where several drivers work together in the same car. F1 has a team championship, and an individual championship. Although they may work together in developing the car, when it comes to racing it's not a team sport. You practically never see drivers helping out their team mates in any way on track.