Mike Gascoyne was shocked to see Ferrari drivers Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso switching places in the German Grand Prix on Sunday, as he believes the Italian team ‘would have learned’ from a similar situation at the 2002 Austrian Grand Prix.
In Austria eight years ago, the team clearly instructed leader Rubens Barrichello – who had started from pole position and led for the duration of the race – to yield to team-mate and championship leader Michael Schumacher, with the Brazilian doing so in the final metres of the race.
On Sunday, a similar pass came as compatriot Massa yielded the top spot to Alonso after receiving a radio message which explained that the Spaniard was touring faster.
“I think from my point of view we had a good chuckle about it, it livened it up on the pit wall because you knew what it was going to create,” Gascoyne, Chief Technical Officer for Lotus, smiled when talking to BBC Sport. “I think we’d all do similar things but perhaps not too blatantly and perhaps not at this stage of the season.
“You saw some great racing in Turkey between drivers, especially between Jenson (Button) and Lewis (Hamilton); it was allowed to happen - teams like McLaren and Williams have always allowed it to happen and have lost championships because of it.
“You have to say, Ferrari as a team have always been very sort of cynical about it, and continue to be, but they should have just handled it so much better because I think we all have those sort of code words and we all make decisions, as team owners or whatever on the pit wall, but just don’t do it so stupidly.
“Where do you draw the line? Where do you say it is the right part of a season to prioritise one driver, or not? It’s very, very difficult.”
Having discussed the matter with fans on Twitter in the minutes which followed the race, Mike expressed the general views of supporters:
“The feedback is massively that everyone feels they were cheated of a result, they were cheated of watching a great finish to a Grand Prix, and I think it’s time for Formula 1 to take note of that.
“The thing that happened before in 2002 was just so blatant but this wasn’t much less blatant, apart from that it wasn’t done at the end, so you would have thought Ferrari would have learned from that but obviously they haven’t.”
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