Originally Posted by
ACU:
“In much the same way, people were up in arms when Vettel ignored the team in the infamous multi-21 situation with Webber. People were saying that he should have obeyed the team, its a team sport etc. I bet some of the same people are now saying its ok to disobey team orders.
”
The two situations are not comparable though. At the point of Multi-21 the drivers championships were still very much open and the WCC was no where near decided.
Red Bull were fully justified at that point to use team orders. They order was put in place to ensure a 1-2 finish to gain maximum points in the WCC. The team wanted the drivers to back off, not push the engines & not risk taking each other out of the race.
The 43 points that the team would take from this race was the prime concern that day as it should have been. They had everything to fight for.
Merc had NOTHING to fight for. everything was wrapped up, done & dusted, finished, concluded. They had nothing to gain at all.
If they had used the comms during the race and said "guys, this is all about you now, you need to race against each other" they would have walked away from the race with a massive amount of respect, fantastic publicity for the brand & a general feel good factor.
As it stands they have left the last race with a PR nightmare, a lot of negative publicity, discord from the one of the drivers & probably the mechanics on his side of the garage & am employment decision to make on how to deal with a totally avoidable but obvious breach of team orders.