F1's ten most controversial team orders

Team orders expose one of the Formula 1’s biggest contradictions: the grid is made up of 22 drivers, all determined to do what it takes to become world champion. But each one is also signed to a constructor, committed to work together with another driver. These two things collide when it comes to team orders – and sparks can fly.

This weekend, Formula 1 races to Sepang for the first time in nine years, for the Bahrain Grand Prix that’s decamped from the conflict-affected Middle East.

It’s a return to the scene of one of F1’s most infamous and heated team orders controversies, when Sebastian Vettel ignored Red Bull’s ‘Multi 21’ order to cruise to the finish and instead attacked his Red Bull team-mate, seizing the win and leaving Mark Webber seething.

With team orders still playing a role in most F1 seasons, we’ve compiled a list of the most contentious moments they have created in grand prix racing.

10. Prost’s pre-race agreement in tatters
1982 French GP

René Arnoux had put his Renault on pole for the 1982 French Grand Prix, but with Alain Prost best-placed in the title fight, Arnoux offered to hand his team-mate the win if needed, in a pre-race agreement.

Both Brabhams flew past early on before retiring, leaving the Renaults running one-two – with Prost 20sec behind, slowed by damage that was costing him downforce.

The team signalled Arnoux to let him through and he did slow down, as he told Motor Sport years later, but not by enough; he was still pulling away.

Despite Prost’s fury at Arnoux’s win, it ultimately didn’t alter the championship result. Prost would have gained an extra three points with victory in France, but finished the season ten points behind the title winner Keke Rosberg.

9. Mercedes sidelines Bottas
2018 Russian GP

Valtteri Bottas started on pole at Sochi and led comfortably, but it wasn’t long until he had to sacrifice his race for Mercedes team-mate and championship leader Lewis Hamilton.

After the first pitstops, Bottas was leading Ferrari’s title contender Sebastian Vettel, with Hamilton following behind. Bottas was told to slow down and delay the Ferrari, which allowed Hamilton to muscle past Vettel, gaining position but damaging his tyres in the process.

It left Hamilton vulnerable so, to Bottas’s confusion, the Mercedes pitwall ordered him to hand the lead to Hamilton and then fend off Vettel with his healthier rubber.

Vettel’s challenge faded towards the end of the race, making Mercedes’ 1-2 finish more secure. At the point, the team could have restored the positions as they were before team orders. “So is this how we’re going to finish the race?” asked Bottas. “Yes,” he was told.

The decision tarnished Mercedes in the view of many fans and proved over-cautious, given Hamilton’s 88 point winning margin in that year’s championship.

8. Verstappen’s revenge
2022 Sao Paulo GP

Max Verstappen had already won the 2022 title when Red Bull asked him to help Sergio Perez to beat Charles Leclerc to second-place in the championship.

The Dutchman was running sixth ahead of his team-mate at Interlagos, the penultimate round of the season – having been let through by his team-mate earlier in the race.

The understanding was that Verstappen would return the favour and allow Perez past if the cars were running together. Red Bull reminded the world champion of this on the last lap, but Verstappen ignored the order. “You guys don’t ask that again to me, OK?” said Verstappen mysteriously on the radio. “I gave my reasons and I stand by it.”

It emerged that the refusal was likely down to Perez’s late crash in qualifying at Monaco earlier that year, which Verstappen saw as deliberate. The incident brought out the red flags, prevented Verstappen from improving his time, and ultimately ended in Perez winning the race.

Perez said the Interlagos incident showed who Verstappen really was, and Red Bull admitted it had handled the communication badly. Perez missed out on two points by Verstappen’s action. He finished third in the championship – three points behind second-placed Charles Leclerc.

7. McLaren’s pitstop fumbles
2024 Hungarian & 2025 Italian GPs

McLaren’s long-standing reluctance to impose team orders since the days of Senna and Prost or Hamilton and Alonso has evolved into its current-era ‘Papaya rules’, which give its drivers licence to race hard but fairly… most of the time.

Oscar Piastri was on course for his maiden F1 win at the 2024 Hungarian Grand Prix when McLaren went against protocol by pitting second-placed Lando Norris ahead of his team-mate to protect him from challengers behind.

The unconventional sequencing handed Norris the lead, so McLaren instructed him to return the place. There began an awkward series of laps where Norris’s race engineer relayed ever more urgent pleas to allow Piastri past, and Norris responded vaguely – when he replied at all, as if working out whether to ignore the team order.

“The way to win a championship is not by yourself,” he was told and eventually, a full 20 laps after the team order was issued, Norris moved across, and Piastri celebrated his first F1 victory.

The roles were reversed at Monza a year later. Second-place Norris had been ahead of Piastri before the final pitstops, but a wheel gun issue dropped him behind his team-mate. In a decision that provoked widespread debate after the race, McLaren ordered its drivers to swap places.

Piastri, then leading the title race by 34 points, pushed back: “We said that a slow pitstop was part of racing. I don’t really get what’s changed here,” he said on the radio before complying, earning Norris three additional points.

It marked the turning point of Piastri’s championship bid. Norris cut his team-mate’s points advantage in every subsequent race until he himself was leading the title race. He was crowned world champion by just two points over Max Verstappen.

6. Ferrari’s ‘disgusting’ team order
2002 Austrian GP

The team order that changed the rulebook for everyone: Williams technical boss Patrick Head called it a “disgusting, cynical act”; commentator James Allen was left almost speechless, save for the word: “Outrageous!”; and fans booed as the drivers climbed out of their cars.

Spectators at the 2002 Austrian Grand Prix had just witnessed Rubens Barrichello lead Ferrari team-mate Michael Schumacher from the start of the race to the final corner of the very last lap. He then slowed suddenly to hand championship-leader Schumacher victory within sight of the chequered flag.

As the crowd’s displeasure rang out, Schumacher pushed Barrichello on to the top step of the podium, the place he merited having been unusually dominant over his team-mate that day. That cost the team a $1m fine for failing to follow the standard podium procedure, but that was just the start.

The incident resulted in team orders being banned from the 2003 season, not that this prevented engineers from finding ways to circumvent them – some more obviously than others. The rule was eventually dropped in 2010 after officials conceded it was unenforceable.

It later emerged that Ferrari had been demanding that Barrichello surrender the lead for eight laps, before threatening him, according to Barrichello. “It was eight laps of war,” he said, recalling the race in 2012. “I was screaming on the radio, saying I would not let him pass.

“That’s when they said something about something much broader. It was a form of threat that made me think about re-thinking my life, because the great joy for me was driving.”

In hindsight, the four point difference between winning and finishing second in 2002 was not worth the drama: after Austria, Schumacher led the title race by 27 points. He finished the season 67 points ahead.

5. Alonso and Hamilton fall out
2007 Hungarian GP

Not all team orders situations happen in the race: one of the most famous happened in qualifying. McLaren’s 2007 Hungaroring run plan called for hotshot rookie Lewis Hamilton to give way to Fernando Alonso at the start of Q3, so the reigning world champion would have clean air for his run.

When Hamilton failed to do so, Alonso retaliated. McLaren had stacked its cars in the pitlane ahead of the fastest final runs. When the lollipop was raised, Alonso sat in the pitbox, blocking Hamilton from having his tyres changed.

When Alonso did pull away, 10sec later, it was too late for Hamilton to pit and then reach the startline before the end of the session.

Alonso’s actions were so obviously underhand that the FIA got involved and handed down a five-place grid penalty for impeding a driver. McLaren lost its constructors’ points from the race, having been accused of lying in its explanation of the incident.

Hamilton started from pole and won, finishing the season level on points with Alonso – both a single point behind that year’s champion, Kimi Räikkönen.

But the repercussions went further: that weekend a disgruntled Alonso revealed he had emails which reopened the Spygate scandal, resulting in McLaren being fined $100m for receiving secret Ferrari designs. He left the team at the end of the season, rejoining Renault, where he was involved (unknowingly) in an even greater team orders scandal (see below).

4. Multi 21
2013 Malaysian GP

“Multi-map 2-1,” said Sebastian Vettel’s race engineer Guillaume Rocquelin. “And look after your tyres please”.

The radio message at the 2013 Malaysian Grand Prix initially went unnoticed by most TV viewers, but marked the opening of one of F1’s most notorious team orders controversies.

It instructed car No1 (Vettel) to remain behind his team-mate and race leader Mark Webber in car No2. The race was drawing to a close, their lead was comfortable and, with concerns over tyre wear, the team was keen to ensure that it secured the points rather than risk everything by allowing its drivers to fight.

Vettel had other ideas. He attacked Webber repeatedly over two laps, coming close to making contact, which prompted team boss Christian Horner to urge: “C’mon Seb, this is getting silly now”.

It failed to deter Vettel who muscled past and claimed victory in front of an irate Webber, whose terse words in the cool-down room became part of F1 legend: “Multi 21, Seb. Yeah…Multi 21.”

3. ‘Fernando is faster than you’
2010 German GP

Formula 1’s team orders ban was in place for eight years from 2003 until the rule was dropped, and Ferrari was once again responsible for the change.

Teams had long been suspected of using coded messages to flout the ban, but it was a cartoonishly transparent transmission that proved to be the tipping point.

“Fernando is faster than you. Can you confirm you understood that message?” Felipe Massa was told in a now-infamous missive from his Ferrari race engineer Rob Smedley, who spoke slowly, deliberately and clearly reluctantly.

With a catch-all clause in his contract to follow the team’s instructions, Massa had no choice but to slow and allow team-mate Fernando Alonso past. To add insult to injury, it came a year to the day after Massa’s helmet was struck by a suspension coil from the car ahead, causing life-threatening injuries.

Ferrari received a $100,000 fine for breaching the team orders ban, which was scrapped at the end of the season; officials giving up on a rule that they could not properly enforce. It was a pivotal moment for Massa too, who later said that it was difficult to come back from the sense of being sidelined by Ferrari’s order.

2. Villeneuve and Pironi’s tragic rivalry
1982 San Marino 1982

With much of the grid missing because of a political dispute, the battle at Imola in 1982 came down to the Renaults versus the Ferraris. And once the former had both retired, the only question was whether leader Gilles Villeneuve or team-mate Didier Pironi would win.

Concerned about fuel consumption, Villeneuve slowed, allowing Pironi to catch him and briefly pass, assuming that he was showboating for the crowd to make up for the lack of competition.

Ferrari hung out a board that instructed its cars to “Slow”, indicating that the cars should hold position, but Pironi darted past on the final lap, at the last overtaking opportunity, to win.

A furious Villeneuve vowed never to speak to Pironi again. The pledge was tragically fulfilled when a still-furious Villeneuve was killed in qualifying at Zolder less than two weeks later.

Pironi’s own career ended in a crash at Hockenheim in August that same year. When his twin sons were born, months after his death in 1987, they were named Didier and Gilles.

1. Crashgate
2008 Singapore GP

Team orders were still illegal in 2008, but that was the least of Renault’s worries when that year’s Singapore Grand Prix scandal emerged.

Known now as Crashgate, the pre-meditated plan called for Nelson Piquet Jr to crash deliberately at the precise moment that would benefit Fernando Alonso, at a circuit where Renault had a rare chance of victory.

Just after Fernando Alonso made an early pitstop and dropped to the back, Renault instructed Piquet to “push hard”; a coded instruction for him to crash, despite the risk of injury.

Piquet duly crashed at Turn 17, where there was no quick way of recovering the car, inevitably triggering a safety car. F1 rules at the time meant that the pitlane was then automatically closed.

It enabled Alonso to close the gap to the rest of the field as they queued behind the safety car. When  the incident was cleared and the pitlane reopened, the rest of the field made their stops, leaving Alonso in the lead: he went on to win.

There were immediate suspicions, but the conspiracy was fully blown open when Renault fired Piquet the following year. He told racing’s governing body, the FIA what had happened. Team boss Flavio Briatore was banned from the sport indefinitely (a ruling that was ultimately overturned). Lead engineer Pat Symonds was banned for two years.

The controversy still rumbles on: Felipe Massa, who had been leading the race before Piquet’s crash, has launched a claim for compensation, alleging that Crashgate cost him that year’s world championship, which he lost to Lewis Hamilton by one point.