Team Orders: Why Red Bull were wrong when Ferrari were right

I feel that Christian Horner's call for Mark Webber to not try to overtake Sebastian Vettel at Silverstone was wrong.

"Now hang on...." you might be thinking, as I supported Ferrari's decision to order Felipe Massa to allow Fernando Alonso past at Hockenheim last year.

The thing is, these are two different situations and should therefore be treated differently.

I support the decision to allow team orders in the regulations. This is because there are some scenarios where team orders are the correct thing for a team to use, so trying to ban them is unrealistic.

However, this does not mean that I think team orders are acceptable in every situation. Let's go back to Hockenheim first.

(Before I do that, before anybody accuses me of bias, I would like to point out that I am certainly not a Ferrari fan. Nor do I support Webber over Vettel. If anything, it would be the other way around.)

At that point in the season, Fernando Alonso was (just about) still in contention for the title, whereas teammate Felipe Massa was not. There was no way that Ferrari could allow Massa to win over Alonso, so using team orders was correct in that situation to allow Alonso to take the lead in a way that ensured Ferrari would still get a 1-2 finish.

Now let's look at what happened at Silverstone.

Red Bull entered Silverstone with a big lead in the constructors' standings, while Sebastian Vettel had a huge lead in the drivers' standings.

Christian Horner said afterwards that he wanted to preserve the team's 2-3 finish. But why? A 2-3 finish for Red Bull was not essential. By their recent standards, it would not be a particularly strong result, would it?

If Ferrari were in that situation, with a 2-3 finish on the cards, I would understand if they wanted to hold station. Similarly with McLaren, a 2-3 finish at home would have been an important result so it would have been the right thing to hold positions and ensure the double podium finish.

With Vettel's huge lead in the drivers' standings it is not like Red Bull need to help him to score as many points as possible. With their comfortable position in both standings, Red Bull should be allowing Webber to challenge and pass Vettel in order to try and score more points than him in a GP, which he hasn't yet managed this year.

So that is basically why the decision yesterday was the wrong one. I haven't touched on how it robbed the fans etc... That is because all team orders prevent proper racing anyway, so there's no argument to be had there. Unlike many, I feel there is a time and a place for team orders, and this wasn't it. Hockenheim last year was, however.

Here's a bit of further analysis on the whole situation...

In his post-race interviews Horner seemed to suggest that his drivers 'were going to crash'. Can he not trust the drivers of the best team on the grid not to crash into each other? How bad must that make Webber feel, if his team boss cannot trust him not to crash into his teammate?

The reasons given by Horner post-race may all have been a cover up for the team simply favouring Vettel and wanting him to finish ahead of Webber.

I cannot blame Horner for favouring Vettel slightly. We all have our favourites, and Vettel is a very likable chap. However, I do not believe, if the true reason for yesterday's move was simply favouring Vettel, that Horner would favour Vettel sufficiently to make such a call.

Horner is a good guy, who cares for the sport. I do not feel that he would make a decision to favour one driver over another in a race at the detriment of the racing.

I think that, if driver favouritism was the reason for the move, it would have not been Horner's call. The call could have come directly from Helmut Marko, or Horner could have made the call under pressure from the bosses.

However, I cannot blame the Red Bull bosses (i.e. not Horner) for favouring Vettel over Webber. They've backed him throughout his career and he is of much higher value to them than Webber. They must do everything they can to keep Vettel happy.