kledaras wrote:Funny reading all the comments crying about seb ignoring a team order, when most of these same people would bash team orders in any other situation (alo massa, msc baric). Oh and i remember seeing a poll, where after malaysian race majority of people said it was bad for vettel to ignore team orders and pass mark. At the same time the same majority said it was not fair for a rosberg to be told to hold station and not to overtake lewis, which happened in the same race. I assume all these discussions about these situations are nothing more than "my driver is best" type of discussion.
Those are two very different situations. What was 'wrong' about multi 21 is that the team essentially made a decision to keep station. That order went out to both drivers. Vettel went rogue when he chose to ignore that order and go on the attack vs a driver who wasn't sure what was happening. The end result was that post race; Webber wasn't sure if the team had betrayed him by giving Vettel a different order or if Vettel was the one who ignored it. It would have been better if the team had not given out any order at all and Vettel had 'beaten' his team-mate fair-and-square. The way he did it though wasn't - one was following team-orders, the other wasn't (and took advantage of it).
On Rosberg and Hamilton; They had their little fight - Rosberg tried, but couldn't pull it off until the team (Ross) decided to intervene and tell them both to hold station. This wasn't favoritism that permitted Hamilton to be the one on the podium, but the fact that Malaysia is their largest sponsor and contributors (Petronas) home-race, so a podium was of up-most-importance. They couldn't afford to have both drivers clash out and DNF. It was also their first podium I think for a long time and after sub-par seasons in 2010-2012, the podium 2013 in Malaysia was a very important highlight for the team and their sponsor(s).
So while team-orders can always be considered "wrong" - they are sometimes necessary. Like when both drivers are on differing strategies and find themselves behind one another on the track, it may be crucial to not stand in your own way for the best possible result. When both drivers are in direct battle with one another, it gets harder to judge what is right and wrong; sometimes the team may chose to hold station if they feel it's for the good of the team or for the WDC consideration, if a result is important and you can't trust your drivers to bring it home (or damage their car by pushing over the limit, i.e. Canada 2014). Then there are other team-orders like ordering drivers to "swap position" which are even less justifiable, though sometimes from the teams-view necessary. Sometimes also, the team makes the morally wrong decision by imposing team-orders (Mercedes: Hungary 2015). It's a difficult topic; we aren't watching a drivers sport, we are watching a *team-sport* - one made up of 2 drivers, their engineers, one or two strategist and
hundreds of employees in the garage or at the factory. Then you also have the money value to consider, sponsors etc.
But yeah, multi-21 - the issue wasn't the order, it was how Vettel dealt and took advantage of it. We'll sadly never know how it would have turned out if there had been no multi-21 order that day and Webber was fully aware that Vettel behind was on the attack.
