Top 5: Team orders rows in F1 - MotorSportsTalk

The explosive row over team orders yesterday is just the latest in a series of similar controversies. Here are some of the most famous.

1981 Brazilian Grand Prix

Williams’ drivers ran one-two throughout the soaked Brazilian Grand Prix in 1981. But reigning champion Alan Jones was behind team mate Carlos Reutemann on the track, and team principal Frank Williams wanted the order reversed.

Reutemann repeatedly ignored signals from his team to move over, an act of defiance which irrevocably soured relations between the pair.

1982 San Marino Grand Prix

Gilles Villeneuve believed Ferrari team orders ensured Didier Pironi would not challenge him for victory at Imola in 1982. So when Pironi came past him in the closing stages Villeneuve thought his team mate was just putting on a show.

He wasn’t, and an incensed Villeneuve lost the win. Two weeks later Villeneuve suffered an horrific crash during qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix and was killed. The time he’d been trying to beat was Pironi’s.

1998 Australian Grand Prix

McLaren dominated the opening round of the 1998 world championship but Mika Hakkinen lost the lead by entering the pits when he wasn’t supposed to.

David Coulthard generously handed the race win back to his team mate and followed him home.

2002 Austrian Grand Prix

At the A1-Ring in 2001 Rubens Barrichello was ordered to let Michael Schumacher past into second place on the final lap. Afterwards he reassured reporters he would not be called upon to do the same had he been leading.

But twelve months later he was proved wrong, and Ferrari were pilloried for rigging the race. In response FIA president Max Mosley introduced rules banning team orders.

2010 German Grand Prix

Eight years later Mosley had been replaced at the FIA by Jean Todt – the man who’d given Barrichello his orders in Austria.

So when Ferrari orchestrated another change of positions – ordering Felipe Massa to let Fernando Alonso win at Hockenheim – the governing body stayed its hand. Ferrari were handed a token fine, and Todt scrapped the team orders ban at the end of the year.

Media and fan attention focused on a controversial run-in between Haiden Deegan and his Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing teammate Jordon Smith during Round 10 of the Monster Energy Supercross race at Detroit, after which the 250 East points’ Hunter Lawrence defends the young rider in the postrace news conference.

Deegan took the early lead in Heat 1 of the round, but the mood swiftly changed when he became embroiled in a spirited battle with teammate Smith.

On Lap 3, Smith caught Deegan with a fast pass through the whoops. Smith briefly held the lead heading into a bowl turn but Deegan had the inside line and threw a block pass. In the next few turns, the action heated up until Smith eventually ran into the back of Deegan’s Yamaha and crashed.

One of the highlights of the battle seemed to include a moment when Deegan waited on Smith in order to throw a second block pass, adding fuel to the controversy.

After his initial crash, Smith fell to seventh on the next lap. He would crash twice more during the event, ultimately finishing four laps off the pace in 20th.

The topic was inevitably part of the postrace news conference.

“It was good racing; it was fun,” Deegan said at about the 27-minute mark in the video above. “I just had some fun doing it.”

Smith had more trouble in the Last Chance Qualifier. He stalled his bike in heavy traffic, worked his way into a battle for fourth with the checkers in sight, but crashed a few yards shy of the finish line and was credited with seventh. Smith earned zero points and fell to sixth in the standings.

Lawrence defends Deegan — *Jordon Smith failed to make the Detroit Supercross Main and fell to sixth in the points. – Feld Motor Sports*

“I think he’s like fifth in points,” Deegan said. “He’s a little out of it. Beside that it was good, I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

Deegan jokingly deflected an earlier question with the response that he wasn’t paying attention during the incident.

“He’s my teammate, but he’s a veteran, he’s been in this sport for a while,” Deegan said. “I was up there just battling. I want to win as much as everybody else. It doesn’t matter if it’s a heat race or a main; I just want to win. I was just trying to push that.”

As Deegan and Smith battled, Jeremy Martin took the lead. Deegan finished second in the heat and backed up his performance with a solid third-place showing in the main, which was his second podium finish in a short six-race career. Deegan’s first podium was earned at Daytona, just two rounds ago.

But as Deegan struggled to find something meaningful to say, unsurprisingly for a 17-year-old rider who was not scheduled to run the full 250 schedule this year, it was the championship leader Lawrence who came to his defense.

“I just want to point something out, which kind of amazes me,” Lawrence said during the conference. “So many of the people on social media, where everyone puts their expertise in, are saying the racing back in the ’80s, the early 90s, when me were men. They’re always talking about how gnarly it was and then anytime a block pass or something happens now, everyone cries about it.

“That’s just a little bit interesting. Pick one. You want the gnarly block passes from 10 years ago and then you get it, everyone makes a big song and dance about it.”

Pressed further, Lawrence defended not only the pass but the decision-making process that gets employed lap after lap in a Supercross race.

“It’s easy to point the finger,” Lawrence said. “We’re out there making decisions in a split millisecond. People have all month to pay their phone bill and they still can’t do that on time.

“We’re making decisions at such a fast reaction [time with] adrenaline. … I’m not just saying it for me or Haiden. I speak for all the guys. No one is perfect and we’re under a microscope out there. The media is really quick to point a finger when someone makes a mistake.”

The media is required to hold athletes accountable for their actions. They are also required to tell the complete story.

Read more about SuperMotocross