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The German Grand Prix has reopened the issue of team orders in Formula 1. There have been hints of team orders and favouritism within the McLaren and Red Bull ranks up until now, but Ferrari’s more obvious approach to it has brought about uproar in the paddock and amongst the fans. Felipe Massa was leading the race, and comfortably too, so why did Ferrari not respect the rule stating that teams should not be allowed to influence the result in such a way? The problem is not the principle of the rule – the idea of all drivers being on equal standing is better for the racing and the PR – but the problems lies with the format of the sport.
In the 70’s teams could run as many cars as they liked. McLaren gave debuts to youngsters such as Gilles Villeneuve by running them in 3rd cars, and other big teams of the day such as Lotus or Ferrari would also do this. Often, running the third car was an opportunity to gain extra manufacturer points too – as again, McLaren handed a car to Jacky Ickx (having just defected from Ferrari) as a Nurburgring ‘expert’ to add a few points at the German Grand Prix of 1973. But it was not just the big teams that took advantage on the lack of restriction on team entries. Small teams were able to run just one car – allowing them to save money and build cars specifically tailored to a driver. In 1977, Wolf Racing fielded a single car for Jody Scheckter. The small but talented team provided an excellent car for its talented driver (who would join Ferrari two years later and go on to win the championship in that same year) – and won three times en route a very respectable 2nd in the Driver’s Championship. During that season, twenty different teams competed at various times (although some were not full-time entries).

By 1990, no teams could afford to run three cars, and with the development rate at the front, the one-car teams started to gain a reputation for being slow and underfunded. None remained for 1991, and F1 passed a rule stating that all teams HAD to run 2 cars. No more, no less.

The reason I mention this, is that if you stipulate that constructors HAVE to run a pair of cars, then they are a TEAM and should be expected to compete as a TEAM. The rules put the teams into a situation where they have 2 cars on track, yet they are not allowed to race as a team. Does nobody else find that ridiculous? Imagine playing in a football team where the rules said you weren’t allowed to pass to certain members of your own team. Imagine working in a kitchen where you weren’t allowed to share ingredients or pots with the other chefs. If you specify that constructors HAVE TO race more than one car, you should NOT be surprised if they compete as a team.

I think the main objection people have is the manner in which this took place. However it is not correct to view Ferrari as ‘evil’ in this situation. At Turkey, McLaren called off the race between Hamilton and Button by insisting over the radio that Button needed to slow down in order to “save fuel”. I write that in inverted commas, as the voice on the radio placed much more emphasis on the “slow down” than the “save fuel” part of the message… At a team like McLaren, known for its completely logical approach to racing, this was dealt with in the near-robotic manner we have come to expect from a team whose cars are mostly grey, and whose drivers and staff speak the same dreadful PR-speak at all times. At Ferrari, the most proud and passionate of teams, things don’t always work out that way.

Flashback to Austria 2002. Rubens Barrichello, known by everyone to be #2 to Michael Schumacher in Ferrari’s pecking order, was dominant all day. When he pulled over within sight of the finish line to allow his team mate to pass, the crowd booed and the F1 community hung its head in shame. But does anybody really believe that Ferrari waited until the last lap to tell Rubens to pull over? Of course they didn’t! Ferrari were applying some of that TEAM logic, but the emotionally charged Barrichello was determined to prove a point – that he was the driver who deserved to win this race – and so made his actions as obvious as possible. However it cannot be denied that Michael Schumacher was the team’s driver most likely to win the championship, and as a team it is logical to suggest that the efforts be put behind the driver in the best position.

In Germany, Felipe Massa – another proud Brazilian racer who has gone some time without a win – will have been aware that he is some way behind his illustrious team mate in the championship. His equally proud engineer, Rob Smedley, received the word from top brass that the time had come to allow the team’s best-placed driver to pass, and what followed was a case of two proud men determined to prove that they deserved to win this race. The engineers have the option of using a private radio channel – one that cannot be heard by the media – however Smedley chose to use the public channel, informing everyone of what was about to take place. Massa slowed deliberately in an area that would be most obvious, before Smedley returned the the public channel to apologise to his driver and confirming to the watching millions that they had just seen his driver lose the lead through no fault of their own. When viewed from a human perspective it is sad to see a certain victory taken from a competitor who deserves it, but when viewed from a business perspective the decision makes perfect sense. Massa is too far away in the championship so Ferrari’s only shot at championship glory lies with Fernando Alonso. The team’s cars have not been as fast as the Red Bull or McLaren cars, so the team have no choice but to compete tactically if they are to stand a chance of victory when all is said and done.

As I stated before, it is the manner of the act that has incensed people. In 1999 Michael Schumacher was injured in a crash at the British Grand Prix, so Ferrari diverted its attention to team mate Eddie Irvine. The Irish racer was now the team’s best chance of championship victory, and Finland’s Mika Salo was hired to replace the injured German. At the German Grand Prix that year, Salo was leading in the closing stages before handing the lead to Irvine, allowing the Irishman to score maximum points to aid his points tally. But Salo was a substitute driver and that was to be expected, so the act was not seen as improper. In Touring Cars, where teams are not limited on entries, it is still common for teams to hire extra drivers or ‘local experts’ to aid them in the championship. In the recent British round of the WTCC, Chevrolet’s Rob Huff pulled aside to allow team mate (and championship leader) Yvan Muller to pass and score victory. However, there have been some extreme examples of team orders in tin top racing over the years, in a format where team orders are not penalised.
In the 1996 BTCC BMW were running cars for 1993 champion Joachim Winklehock, 1987 WTCC champion Roberto Ravaglia, and Peter Kox. During round 23 at Brands Hatch, Ravaglia’s car was damaged and the team repaired it before the end of the race – and sent the car out to ‘check it’ for race 2 of the day. Kox was running second to Renault’s Alain Menu, and Ravaglia then turned a series of slow laps in order to position himself in Menu’s way on the last lap – in a bid to get Kox into the lead. Into the last corner Ravaglia slowed down so much that Menu lost all of his lead to the other BMW, although he just held on to win the race. The actions of Ferrari this weekend seem tame by comparison!

So where does this leave us? In my opinion, forbidding ‘team orders’ seems unreasonable, despite the negative impact they have on the sport. If the constructors are forced to race as a team, they should be allowed to compete as a team – as to say otherwise defeats the object of being a team in the first place. Everyone loves to see drivers, and the drivers are obviously the heroes, but the sport would not exist without its teams. F1 is the pinnacle of motorsport BECAUSE the teams are constantly pushing to create faster and faster cars. If you want to see the drivers race for nothing but themselves, you have to have a centrally-run sport with no teams, just drivers – and that is never going to have the appeal of F1 as it is currently, as the lack of technical innovation will prevent F1 from being able to claim itself to be the pinnacle of the motor racing world.

If all this talk of ‘team orders’ has got you down, just remember this tale. In the 2007 WTCC, Chevrolet hired 1998 BTCC champion Rikard Rydell to drive as a ‘local expert’ at his home round in Sweden. Whilst leading the second race of the day, Rydell received the call to drop back and allow his team mates to pass. Knowing this was the only race he would ever do for the team, and in front of his home crowd, the Swede ignored the team and pressed on to take an internally-unpopular victory ahead of bemused team mates Nicola Larini and Alain Menu. Nice one Rikard!

Hi to everyone from Le Mans which is turning out to be pretty good so far!  We had a good couple of days of practice and qualifying sessions and thought we’d be starting just behind the Risi Ferrari, but since they were pushed to the back of the grid for a technical infraction, we’ve been bumped up to the number one spot in the GT2 class.  Our sister car is just behind us, as Jan (Magnussen) got a pretty good lap in.  The two Corvettes and the two Ferraris were the only four to get under the four-minute a lap barrier – which is about 3 seconds a lap quicker than last year’s qualifying times..

It’s always special to get pole position here because the competition is so high from so many great teams and drivers.  It’s never nice getting it from another team’s misfortune though and I’d have loved to beat the Ferrari in a straight fight on the track, but we can save that for Saturday and Sunday. 

It seems that the two Corvettes and the two Ferraris that were originally at the front are very close on speed, and it’s going to be a very tight and intense race.  The Porsches are only a tiny bit behind on speed and they’ve got fantastic driver line ups with very good teams so I know they’ll be challenging right from the start.   The BMW is a very new car but they should be strong – both team and drivers – so can’t be discounted.

As always here in qualifying, it was a bit of a banzai run.  The guys sent me out with great tyres and good position on the track. I felt that if only we could get a clean lap and I could get it all together, the time would be there.  I made a small mistake coming out of Dunlop chicane – I got on the Astroturf and it spun the rear tyres up. I was concentrating on the chicanes and I got through those cleanly, and then I stumbled upon a GT1 car in the second chicane. I pushed like crazy for the rest of the lap, and in the Porsche Curves I was really holding on…one small slip and it could have all gone horribly wrong! The Ford chicane was still a little damp, so I had to hold my breath and wing it.

It looks like Saturday and Sunday’s race is going to be a fantastic battle between us and Ferrari and Porsche.  This event is massively important to the team and to GM and has really been our focus for the year.  Bring it on.

Hi

Hope that you all had a great weekend. Our testing over the weekend in our Evo9 went great and we are confident that with the information we gathered from our test that we will be able to put together a faster package than what we had last year.

Leading up to the test there were plenty of early morning finishes getting the car back together and ready for the test. We then headed down to the forest early Saturday morning where we spent over 13 hours trying new suspension and diff set-ups. Obviously from the results we achieved last year we have a strong package already and when you get to this stage the steps of development get smaller and smaller which are ultimately harder to find. But we made quite a few steps forward with the car which is very promising especially as we have some more development to do based off the information from the weekend.

A huge thanks to the whole team for helping get everything ready and in place for the test and their work during our long day in the forest. Also a huge thanks to Murray Coutes from MCA Suspension in Australia for coming over to help with the fine tuning of our dampers. We now have a few changes to make to the car before we undertake one further test before we leave for Rally New Zealand in late April. We were also lucky over the weekend that Sloan Cox and their team joined our test with their Evo 10. As well as us helping them with some advice and guidance it also gave me a chance to have my first drive of an Evo 10, before we head to Italy on Tuesday to have our first drive of our Evo 10 that we will be driving for the season. They are a totally different car which is obvious from their appearance, but also their power distribution and their great handling capabilities. We now have no doubt that the Evo 10 given the right set-up are a faster car than our current Evo 9.

A huge thanks to the Cox family for travelling down from Rotorua to give me the chance to get to grips with an Evo 10 so that I can hit the ground running in just over a weeks time when we begin testing with the Pirelli Star Driver Team.

Now I have a day and a bit to tie up all the loose ends, accumulate and analyse the data from the weekend as well as pack my bags before we depart from Christchurch mid Tuesday afternoon. I cannot wait to get over there, meet the team and team-mates, and start what is going to be an exciting year. While we are in the UK before our training program begins, John and I will be spending a day with Rob Wilson, a reknown driver trainer that Mikko Hirvonen (Ford World Rally Team) works closely with. I will keep you up to date with progress as much as I can, but will have daily updates through our website www.haydenpaddon.com.

It was a dream start to our FIA World Touring Car Championship challenge at Curitiba, and the first time we’ve ever scored well on the opening rounds of the series.

When I arrived in Brazil, I thought fourth and fifth could be on the cards, so you can imagine how happy I am with second and fifth.

In recent years, we’ve left Brazil with no WTCC points, but this time I’m fourth in the drivers’ standings with 28 points. What’s more, Chevrolet is leading the manufacturers’ championship after finishing 1-2-3 in Race 1 and 3-4-5 in Race 2. The performance has finally broken our Curitiba jinx.

Curitiba is one of the best places to come racing. The changeable weather always makes for exciting racing and the atmosphere is electric, especially as it’s the first race of the year and everyone is really pumped up.

This year was no exception.

Thirty minutes before the pit lane was due to open for the first race, it started to rain so heavily that we had to start the race in single file behind the Safety Car. I could see Jordi Gené up ahead.  I followed Gené before in the wet in Japan and he’d locked up and went straight then, so I wasn’t surprised when he did it this time. Moments later Alain Menu out-braked himself, and within seconds of the start I’d moved from fourth to second.

Only Yvan Muller was ahead of me. I had a little lunge at Turn 4 during the race, and although I felt I was slightly quicker than him – especially in the middle part of the race when my car was very strong – I didn’t attack. If it wasn’t my team-mate ahead, then that would have been another matter; I’d have pushed like hell and gone for the win.  However, it had stopped raining, the sun was drying the track out extremely quickly and it was best for me to look after my tyres and get the number 7 Cruze home.

Not only did I do that, for setting fastest lap I won a watch and a mountain ‘bike, courtesy of Monroe Performance. I was presented with the watch at the press conference and the mountain ‘bike, which will be delivered to my home, is supposed to be a good one.  I very grateful – I just wish I hadn’t bought a mountain ‘bike a few weeks ago!

Race 2 was dry and I made a great standing start to go around the outside of everyone. We got a bit bunched up in Turn 2. I was overlapping Tom Coronel and Alain was overlapping me, so when Tom hit the brakes and turned sharp right for Turn 3, we hit.

Unfortunately for Tom, that damaged his car. I was gutted, because he’s a good mate. It wasn’t my fault, but I still made a point of going over to see him after the race and explain, because for sure he would not have seen Alain on the inside of me. He’s a pro and he knows these things can happen.

I didn’t come out of the incident scot-free.  The front toe on my car was pushed out, and from then on it didn’t take right hand corners very well. The gearbox radiator must have been damaged too, because the gearbox temperature went through the roof and all the warning lights came on.

It meant I couldn’t put pressure on the car in front, but the speed of the Cruze enabled me to keep the local star, Augusto Farfus, behind me and finish fifth.

Chevrolet finished 1-2-3 in the opening race of the 2010 season, we lead the manufacturers’ standings and I’ve made the best start ever to a WTCC season. It’s just reward for all the hard work the Chevrolet and RML team has done over the winter months, and this could just be the start of something great.

I have to say I very excited and honoured to be writing this column for the Motors TV website. 2010 looks set to be a very exciting year for me as not only will I be having a proper go at the British GT Championship but the opportunity to drive the new Chevron GR8. Chevron has a fantastic history in making sports cars and single seaters back in the 60s and 70s and to be a part of the next chapter is a dream come true.

The Chevron deal came about quite late as it all happened at the Autosport Show in January after a chance meeting with Ray Grimes, Chevron’s Sporting Director. I was very impressed with the rolling Chassis they had on display especially as the whole concept was only 5 months old. The speed at which they had turned this around and the quality of the work would put a lot of larger manufacturers to shame. Ray and I spoke several times over the weekend and the initial idea was put in place. Following the Autosport Show I then had the pleasure of visiting the Chevron factory in Cheshire, wow what a place, it was like motorsport heaven. There I was surrounded by B16s and B8s in total awe, everywhere you looked there was history including the original B1 built by the Chevron founder Derek Bennett. It seemed a very fitting place to take the next steps in Chevron’s history.

We have a fantastic team behind us this year with several of the engineers and designers having worked for Chevron under Derek Bennett’s leadership, but also the enthusiasm and commitment of Cosworth to supply their engines and electronics really strengthens the package. I really feel as long as we can get on top of the set up of the car early we could have some fantastic results. It is going to be a steep learning curve at the first few rounds as it looks like we will only have a few test days before Oulton Park. However, with the race winning experience of ABG Motorsport, the backing of Cosworth and the outstanding car that Chevron have produced we should be in a good position when the season starts. The only problem I can see is that most Chevron Cars were famous for winning races right out of the box, so no pressure at all then….