You cannot blame Ferrari for looking after their interests but F1 fans want to see a clean fight

13 April 2012

It Has been a strange week to be the presenter of Formula One. I was unable to push a trolley around the supermarket or jump on the Tube without someone mentioning last Sunday's Ferrari furore.

If you missed the German Grand Prix, let me recap. Lap 48 and Felipe Massa is leading from team-mate Fernando Alonso. Massa's race engineer radios to the car: "Fernando is faster than you, do you understand?".

It seemed a clumsy way of telling Massa to relinquish the lead. Sure enough, on the next lap the synchronised swap takes place. Alonso takes the lead, the win and 25 very welcome points. So well done Ferrari, a one-two finish and their man most likely to challenge for the title takes the win.

The problem? Team orders are outlawed. Ferrari have since been fined $100,000 and, perhaps more importantly, reported to the sport's governing body. So where does this leave the sport, the teams and the fans?

As far as the viewing public are concerned, it was a dark day. There are few things sports fans dislike more than a contrived result and the reaction has been unanimous.

Fans watch F1 to see a good fight on the track and they want to see the best driver take the win, regardless of what that result means for the team.

As far as Ferrari are concerned, they'd say they run a team, not two individual cars. The result was the best thing for that team and that dictated the decision. You can see the logic but does that excuse it?

Finally, the sport. Many years ago if a lead driver's car broke down, his team-mate would pull over and let his colleague finish the race in his car and take the points.

If you had two cars at the front and the guy sitting second needed to win to take the title, you'd surely ask his team-mate to let him slip by to secure you the title, wouldn't you? Ferrari will rue being so clumsy.

If Massa had accidentally' missed his braking point, we'd all curse his bad luck and not be in such uproar. Is having a team sport and then expecting those teams not to make decisions based on the team just naive of us?

I felt a palpable level of frustration last weekend and Massa's face told the world how he felt. So where do we go from here? Some are saying ban the team order rule, others believe the sport exists to entertain the millions and if they want a clean, fair fight, let's give them one.

One decision will dominate the talk in Hungary but remember that among it all we've the tightest title battle in years and Alonso might just win the Championship by the slimmest of margins. However, would even that justify what happened in Germany?

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