It's bizarre the perspectives professional sportspeople have, some may say distorted perspectives.
Anyone watching the F1 last weekend got a front seat of this warped sense of reality in action. McLaren F1 are not shy at making use of team orders, and we saw two horrendous versions of this last weekend.
The 1st was preventing Ricciardo from passing Norris early in the race, which was itself bizarre given they were on very different tyre strategies. This may have cost McLaren 2 or 3 spots at the race end.
The 2nd was late in the race telling Norris he couldn't pass Ricciardo, and probably cost McLaren at least one spot on the finish.
I suspect the 1st incident was McLaren managing Norris, expectations and politics, while the 2nd was more about PR and not looking like hypocrites to the F1 world media.
As for the sportspeople, Ricciardo at race end said there were a few "little team orders", despite being heard complaining on the team radio about being held up by Norris. Norris post race complaining about being shockingly ordered by the team not to pass Ricciardo, also like the earlier event which Norris greatly benefitted from had never happened!
The whole day was McLaren shooting itself in the foot, they may well have ended up with two cars in the top 6 had the executives stayed out of the way! The analysis I have seen suggested the early "management event" cost Ricciardo about 30s in total race time, 4th place, and the later "management event" cost Norris 8s in total race time, or 6th place!
Anyone watching the F1 last weekend got a front seat of this warped sense of reality in action. McLaren F1 are not shy at making use of team orders, and we saw two horrendous versions of this last weekend.
The 1st was preventing Ricciardo from passing Norris early in the race, which was itself bizarre given they were on very different tyre strategies. This may have cost McLaren 2 or 3 spots at the race end.
The 2nd was late in the race telling Norris he couldn't pass Ricciardo, and probably cost McLaren at least one spot on the finish.
I suspect the 1st incident was McLaren managing Norris, expectations and politics, while the 2nd was more about PR and not looking like hypocrites to the F1 world media.
As for the sportspeople, Ricciardo at race end said there were a few "little team orders", despite being heard complaining on the team radio about being held up by Norris. Norris post race complaining about being shockingly ordered by the team not to pass Ricciardo, also like the earlier event which Norris greatly benefitted from had never happened!
The whole day was McLaren shooting itself in the foot, they may well have ended up with two cars in the top 6 had the executives stayed out of the way! The analysis I have seen suggested the early "management event" cost Ricciardo about 30s in total race time, 4th place, and the later "management event" cost Norris 8s in total race time, or 6th place!
"Ruck, ruck, ruck, ruck ....... Ruck, ruck, ruck, ruck"