Felipe Massa Was Right to Ignore Williams Team Orders

By
at Internationaled.org

Published: March 30, 2014

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Williams' Felipe Massa was running in seventh place with a few laps to go of the 2014 Formula One Malaysian Grand Prix.

Having done an exceptionally good job of saving fuel, he was attempting to pass the McLaren of Jenson Button for sixth. Just behind and catching fast was Valtteri Bottas in the other Williams.

The team thought Bottas had a better chance of passing Button than Massa, so they asked the Brazilian to move over.

It's bad enough being asked to let a teammate by, but the language used can make it more or less bearable. Williams kept it nice and simple, and TV viewers around the world heard the team radio transmission loud and clear:

"Valtteri is faster than you."

If you had a quiet, slightly guilty chuckle as you heard those words, you're not alone. There's obvious comedy value in Massa's race engineer producing a near word-for-word repetition of the infamous "Fernando is faster than you" message which entered F1 folklore after the 2010 German Grand Prix.

But for those not inclined toward indulging in a spot of schadenfreude, it probably elicited a cringe.

And for Massa, it will have brought back memories of that victory he so famously gave away. Anger, resentment, humiliation, disappointment; pick any of those emotions, and he was probably feeling it.



But of course, that wasn't a one-off occurrence. Massa has a long history as a No. 2 driver and has spent most of his career in a position where, had he found himself ahead, he'd have be asked to let his teammate through.

Moving to Williams, he hoped he'd left all that behind.

So despite his race engineer repeating the message (in more tactful words), he ignored the team orders. Bottas, realising he wasn't going to be waved by, attacked—but Massa held him off and retained seventh.

After the race, Massa was unrepentant. He told James Galloway of Sky Sport...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Formula 1

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