Team orders:you decide

[Scott]

There's no 'I' in team... 

I know, groan, groan, groan, but that's the reality, especially within teams with multi-hundred-million-dollar budgets and hundreds of employees dependent on the outcome.  Without team orders, you are handing those reigns to an emotionally and intellectually immature 20-something year old to take the team to whatever place is best for him.  I'm ok with team orders as long as the team's strategy is established and maybe even published so that everyone knows why and when it will happen.  They could add a rule to prevent teams from drastic race order changes, like ensuring that it only happens when a team is running back to back (which is generally the only time it DOES happen), but otherwise, I prefer there being rules that govern the orders as opposed to conspiracies planted based on every strategic call the team makes.

When it bites the team in the behind, or a driver pushes back, it makes me grin of course, but I understand and accept the need. 

[Jericoke]

Because for the last 25 years, a significant and growing proportion of F1 fans have felt cheated when team orders have been used, especially among leaders (and even more so when it is early in the season). The turning point was Australia 1998, when David Coulthard was ordered to give up a win in the very first race of the season (due to a perfectly traditional, and generally accepted, "hold station" instruction going wrong and McLaren picking a bad way of fixing it). This managed to anger a lot of people and led to pretty much every team order ever since getting scrutinised and (except where absolutely necessary) derided.

I see the point of some team orders, but think there's a time and a place for them (and it's often nowhere near as extensive as F1 bosses think it should be). Teams orders going wrong, or getting disobeyed, never fails to make me laugh. Especially on the rare occasion that disobeying the team orders puts the team in a better position than following orders would have done.

Part of the issue with fans feeling 'cheated' is in some cases they literally are:  there is gambling on F1.  Even our own grid game which is a friendly competition.  It might not matter to us if we lose 4 points because of a driver swap, but if I've bet $10k that Kimi is going to win, I'd be a little p*ssed if he lost on purpose.

American sports have long had problems with players/teams intentionally losing, especially baseball.  They deal with cheaters harshly because they know how important gambling is building a fan base.  (To paraphrase Artie Lange, the Russian GP might seem boring, but put $10k on the over/under of 6.5 DNF and it becomes VERY exciting)

If F1 teams are seen as rigging the results, people won't bet on the sport.  They'll bet elsewhere, which means their attention will go elsewhere.  The issue is the teams can't see past their own nose, and they want to win at any cost, and don't care about if there are fans, because there's (maybe) money to be had for getting Vettel those extra 7 points.

[lkjohnson1950]

Short article about Ferrari, but the last paragraph caught my eye. Sounds like he's saying Shut up and finish second. Even if he's just a reporter, it sort of makes a statement about the general attitude of the team.
https://www.gptours.com/mobile_news.php?command=show&what=news&id=19326

[Jericoke]

Short article about Ferrari, but the last paragraph caught my eye. Sounds like he's saying Shut up and finish second. Even if he's just a reporter, it sort of makes a statement about the general attitude of the team.
https://www.gptours.com/mobile_news.php?command=show&what=news&id=19326

One thing that I always loved about the switch from newspaper to online journalism was the 'string' in articles.  Newspaper articles were always written with self contained paragraphs so an editor could literally just cut the last 2, 3 or half of the paragraphs off a story and it would still make sense.  You'd especially see these on wire stories (associated press etc.).  You'd read the exact same story in two different papers, yet one is three very odd paragraphs longer.

The writers who learned their craft in these days always have the best 'ends' to their stories.  There's no need to cut off the extra on a website, so a bunch of non sequitors that wouldn't have been printed 20 years ago just pop up.  Random thoughts that are tangential to the main story.