I originally answered most of this to a friend over facebook, but i'll elaborate a little more here thanks to space lol.
A little view on what happened on Sundays German GP after Ferrari basically,but without physically saying it, asked Massa to move over and let Alonso by...
Martin Brundle makes a good case
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/8856345.stm
DC also said the team orders rule is impossible to police...EJ also makes a good point, team orders are against the rules now so Ferrari should be punished for it.
We all know team orders happen, 2002 Ferrari did it as blatently as the world has seen (for those that don't remember after the last corner and on the finishing straight Rubens Barrichello LET Michael Schumacher past as he had been ordered to by deliberately slowing down), hence their fine then and the rule being brought in. other teams were and still are much more subtle about it (oops we took an extra second or so to put your tyre on and change the angle of the back wing slightly)...we know it happens but we also know it's usually not blatently implemented as much until the end of a season when the mathematical points needed come into effect...ferrari have done so poorly at the start of this season the ONLY chance they have now IS to push their leading points driver...in this case Alonso was 21 points ahead before the race started so he got priority.
What they SHOULD have done was let Domenicali give the "order", and preferably in some pre-agreed code words...Rob Smedley should never have been put in that position and you could hear in his voice over the radio that he did NOT want to give that information.
$100,000 is feck all as far as a fine goes...an average ferrari road car costs more than that...but that (according to Mike Gascoynes Twitter feed) is the maximum the stewards can give financially...ferrari have accepted it and are not appealing, maybe cos history dictates that if you appeal you are likely to get a harsher penalty...so anything else is now down to the WMSC...who now HAVE to give some sort of reprimand as ferrari have basically been given and accepted a guilty verdict. They HAVE to give some reprimand or EVERY team will start using "your team-mate is faster" as the move over code. If they decide to scrap the rule...well lets just look back to turkey, if Horner had been allowed to tell Webber that Vettel was "faster" then Vettel would have 25 more points and currently leading the drivers championship, with Red Bull leading the constructors...as an example.
The rule cannot be fully policed, the pitwalls would start talking in code and we as spectators would end up being left more and more in the dark about what was REALLY being said...if they scrap the rule then blatent orders will obviously start being used and we could well see the end of team mates racing one another, and the number 2 driver will only really be there to hold up rivals and wipe up the points left over...
We obviously don't know the finer points of Massas contract, it is feasible that it's written in there that if he's told to move over he has to
I don't agree with how it was done...Massa deserved that win as he drove better...if Alonso was faster and wanted the win he shouldve used his driver skill and overtaken like anyone else...we now just have to wait and see what the big bosses will say...at least Jean Todt has taken himself out of this equation as no matter what he believed he would be seen to have bias (his son is massas manager too).
I think they've reacted to the public outcry tho, and they'll see what the general public consensus is and use that to decide what to do
Anyway...i may edit this further as i don't think it fully glides from point to point and tangents and comes back a few times...but there we are for the moment
Now to help hubby get a couple more Crackdown achievements...
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