IMHO, this is terrible for the sport. If one wishes to ban team orders one must ruthlessly enforce the rules otherwise a gray area is left open to exploitation. Ron Dennis stated that his reasons for issuing orders were to ensure his drivers finished the race, trouble is a convenient side effect of this action is that Alonso takes the ten points which neatly helps to clean up the “issues” around the championship lead. Herein lies the problem, one cannot be certain that Ron Dennis had pure intentions, we must just believe which leads to a bunch of possible not so nice interpretations around the ruling:
- Lewis Hamilton brings a lot of extra interest to F1 and we wouldn’t wish to poison that with a team orders embarrassment.
- The stakeholders in the Monte Carlo race might not want it’s reputation tarnished.
- Nobody wants another Ferrari win, anything else is preferable.
So here we are then, Ferrari could be judged to have taken action all those years ago to give themselves the best chance of having one of their drivers win the championship and that’s punished. Mclaren could be judged to have done exactly the same thing and weren’t punished. Just where is the line then? Perhaps it would be better to accept the team orders ban cannot be effectively applied and junk it so as to avoid this kind of mess?
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