It has something to do with prestige and respect, often enforced by the team owner. Lewis Hamilton made his first huge win by ignoring such an instruction.
Not only told to loose. I think in at least one case someone was told to crash, completely blocking the raceway on an already narrow curve. I wouldn't be surprised if that where common even as in some sports one bad racer can take out half the competition.
The penalties for rebuilding a car are reason enough. Being able to hide a coded message for "crash the car" would mean it needs to be discussed before the race began. If the driver followed the command it would be at the risk of HIS superlicense, his entire livelihood, not just some race points for some team he's with for one season.
On the face you've offered an unsubstantiated and impossible enigma for another reader to "solve"
If it weren't for extensive F1 knowledge I might even have been confused by your obvious mistaken recollection or troll.
That would be the crash in 2008, to the advantage of Fernando. Renault did not contest the charges. In the words of Nelson Piquet Jr.:
> During the Formula One Grand Prix of Singapore, held on 28 September 2008 and counting towards the 2008 FIA Formula One World Championship, I was asked by Mr. Flavio Briatore, who is both my manager and the Team Principal of the Renault F1 Team, and by Mr Pat Symonds, the Technical Director of the ING Renault F1 Team, to deliberately crash my car in order to positively influence the performance of the ING Renault F1 team at the event in question. I agreed to this proposal and caused my car to hit a wall and crash during lap thirteen/fourteen of the race.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20091001201052/http://www.f1sa.c...
I'm going to guess that "decade+" maxes out at 14 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Singapore_Grand_Prix
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Formula_One_crash_cont...
Excuse me, what exactly are you referring to? His first GP win was just a regular race without any controversy, and his first championship win was... not impressive, to say it mildly. He did everything to lose and was only saved by Timo Glock slipping on the last lap.
It is also known that Hamilton was always favoured by the team owners and often benefitted from team orders throughout his career.
We know it's a team sport but the star of the show is usually just one guy. Even though they often praise the team and everyone back in the factory, the glory is always directed at the drivers. And in most cases, one particular driver. The star.
Clearly the second drivers have to deal with a lot of shit... that is specified in their contracts
Actually, if a team order changes a ranking, and it can be proved, then the team is automatically issued a fine. Just because the team orders happen, does not actually mean that they're _allowed_ to happen. The fines are generally in the order of $100k-$250k.
Team orders have been banned in F1 since 2008 [0]:
> 152. Team orders which interfere with a race result are prohibited.
There's a reason that Smedley's quote is infamous:
> Fernando is faster than you. Can you confirm you understand that message?
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20081206120227/https://paddockta...
This statement is misleading, as it gives the appearance that this ban is still in effect. However, the ban was repealed at the end of 2010 season. [0]
> This statement is misleading, as it gives the appearance that this ban is still in effect.
Not quite. The statement is false, because it states outright that the ban is still in effect.
Seems like the budget for a F1 team is around 140 million Euro/year. Not sure these fines make anybody feel uncomfortable.
[1] It was quite some time ago, but I'm still pissed
One hell of a way to disgust millions of people immediately, and as you can see here and elsewhere, they will easily hold the grudge for decades. Its just a plain idiotic move to be polite. Nobody is cheering for ie team Williams, everybody is cheering for their favorite driver.
Your attempt to normalize it is so surreal. Do you also like other, proper team sports like football or hockey for all the behind the scenes politics, or actually for the sport itself?
F1 is just fundamentally a team sport, and hardly any of the teamwork generates any level of controversy at all. Even the (very uncommon) controversial cases of a driver being ordered to give up a race win are only a big deal to a certain segment of fans. Typically the deluded ones who think Bottas was better than Hamilton, or Webber was better than Vettel, or Barrichello was better than Schumi, and that all of those drivers would have championships if it weren’t for team orders.
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/analysis-why-did-vettel-i...