Russia Grand Prix: F1’s uneasy relationship with team orders returns but were Mercedes in the right?

Since Formula One began team orders have been utilised to impact race results, but that did not stop Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas feeling the full effect of manipulation in Sochi

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Were Mercedes right in ordering Valtteri Bottas to surrender the lead of the Russian Grand Prix to team-mate Lewis Hamilton on the 25th lap? And not to reverse the decision once it had become clear that Sebastian Vettel was not such a threat as he had been earlier in the contest?

It’s a thorny subject at the best of times. Team orders are as old as motor racing itself, and have long been a contentious issue.

Juan Manuel Fangio was always the number one for whichever team he drove for in the Fifties, be it Alfa Romeo, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz or Ferrari. At Vanwall, Stirling Moss always had the pick of chassis and engines even if it meant taking the engine from Tony Brooks’s car and putting into Stuart Lewis-Evans’ chassis for him to drive. He was the undisputed number one and the team deferred to him. In those days, when such things were permitted, the lead driver could even take over a teammate’s car mid-race if his own stuck trouble.

At times, team orders have been banned, then reinstated.

In the perfect world there would be none. Drivers would fight each other in glorious mano a mano battle, even teammates, and let the cards fall as they may.

For much of the 1978 season in which he enjoyed the fruits of Colin Chapman’s labours in producing the full ground-effect Lotus 79, Mario Andretti had number one status over prodigal son Ronnie Peterson, the superfast Swede whom the Lotus boss had re-hired on the basis that Andretti would be favoured to reap his reward for the development driving he had invested bringing Lotus back to the fore.

“Tell me where it’s written we need two stars in this team!” Andretti had said when he heard the news. But his plan was that after the Italian Grand Prix, in which team orders would still apply, he and Peterson would race each other in the last two events, in the US and Canada. Sadly, Peterson was killed at the start of the Italian race.

Lewis Hamilton, like Andretti, is a proud racer who has no wish to be remembered as a man who needed the help of others in winning his crowns, a point of contention that detracts in some minds from Michael Schumacher’s greatness, who did not mind that in the slightest.

Hamilton’s demeanour after maintaining Mercedes’ immaculate record in the Russian Grand Prix, was not that of a man who had just won for the eighth time in the season and for the 70th overall. He was embarrassed. And Bottas’ stony expression said all you needed to know about how he felt.

Lewis Hamilton was clearly uneasy with his victory in Russia (Getty)

Yet both were admirable in the way that they handled a difficult situation with dignity and aplomb.

The first thing Hamilton did was to seek out Bottas and tell him that he had not asked the team to get him to move over. Later, he made it clear that, had that not happened, he would have finished second, and Bottas would have won as he had deserved to earlier in the season, in China and Baku, when fortune went against him.

The Finn is a quiet guy, easy to under-estimate, who nonetheless, according to Mercedes’ Niki Lauda, makes his feelings known in a tough and uncompromising manner when he has to. But he was perfection itself as he pointed out that it didn’t matter to Mercedes’ aspirations in the world championship for constructors which order their drivers finished in, so long as it was one-two and they got 43 points. And that Hamilton was in contention for the world championship for drivers, whereas he himself was not.

But did Mercedes make the right decision?

Mercedes ordered Valtteri Bottas to let Lewis Hamiltoin past to win the Russian Grand Prix (Getty ) (Getty)

In a corporate sense, yes it did. On a sporting level it’s harder to say. Yet it was nothing less than Ferrari have been doing all the time that Kimi Raikkonen has been Vettel’s partner, out there to help but not to beat their established star contender.

Back in Austria in 2002 Jean Todt, then the manager of Ferrari and now the president of the FIA, ordered Rubens Barrichello to surrender a well-earned and decisive victory to Schumacher in Austria, even though the season was still at an early stage when the championship fight was still evolving, and that brought a firestorm of justified criticism and led to a ban on team orders. Ferrari were accused of breaching that in Germany in 2010, when Felipe Massa was likewise ‘told’ to move aside for Fernando Alonso, when he was coldly informed, “Felipe, Fernando is faster than you.”

What Mercedes did on Sunday was acceptable, though one hopes that, if Hamilton’s points lead cannot be bettered, he and Bottas will be free to race, just as Andretti and Peterson had planned to.