Formula 1

[kruddler]

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!

I disagree with your take on McLarens efforts.

The first call in leaving Ricciardo behind Norris had 2 benefits.
1. Allowing Ricciardo to save his tyres without worrying about getting swallowed up by those behind him. It allowed him to cruise and get DRS cancelling out the DRS of those following......once Norris pitted, you saw how quickly ricciardo was swallowed up.
2. Allowed Norris to continue plodding along finding a better spot to jump back into after his pit.

As for the second one....
It was explained well at the time via radio to Norris. "We didn't make you give it up early, so we are not going to make him give it up now."

Ultimately, the timing of the stops allowed Ricciardo to get in front of his teammate....and hold position.

As for your assertion of 'time lost' as a result of the above, that may well be true, but that could've gone out the window had there been another yellow flag/safety car at a better time.
One thing you failed to mention was the fact that the mediums did nothing for Ricciardo...had he been able to get the most out of them he would've disappeared down the road and made all of the above a moot point.

As always, its easy in hindsight.