According to Mark Webber however, the whole discussion about team orders is kinda' hypocritical, since they never actually left Formula One in the first place.
“Yeah, like they ever went!” said Webber in an interview with BBC Radio on Tuesday. “When you've got two drivers driving for a team and you can swing the results around every now and again to help the team achieve a better result ... it has been done in the past, it's been done up and down the field.”
“I've done it myself at times. I've been on the receiving end of it and done it as well in teams I've driven for in the past,” further revealed Webber, who used to drive for Minardi, Jaguar (team orders were hardly the case here) and Williams, before joining Red Bull in 2007.
Team orders were banned from F1 as a result of the 2002 Austrian Grand Prix, when Ferrari's Rubens Barrichello let his teammate Michael Schumacher pass him for victory in the last few hundreds of meters of the race. And it was the same team who brought the discussion back into public debate this year, when a similar situation occurred between Felipe Massa, playing Barrichello's role, and Fernando Alonso (aka Schumacher) in the German Grand Prix.
“I think the Ferrari one was pretty brutal and that's as bad as it gets,” added Webber, who insisted the “return” of team orders will not affect F1 as much as some would like to think. “People shouldn't get too nervous about it. They're not going to see it every weekend.”
Despite Ferrari's constant involvement in team tactics related issues, Webber admitted during the interview that almost every driver in the F1 paddock secretly fancies a move to the Prancing Horse.
“I will take each year as it comes,” he added. “Contract time always comes around and you're either wanted or you're not. Let's see what happens in 2012. I still need to want to do it. What's really important is that you finish on top of your game. I don't want to be beaten by some guys who I don't think should (beat me).”
Google News