McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh discusses the 'team orders' rule

McLaren team boss Martin Whitmarsh believes teams should be free to give drivers orders as calls grow for the controversial ruling to be clarified.

Team orders are banned in Formula 1, but debate has raged since Ferrari appeared to tell their drivers to swap positions in Germany last Sunday.

"What teams do with their drivers should be for the teams to decide," said Whitmarsh at the Hungaroring.

Mercedes boss Ross Brawn admitted it was a "massive dilemma" for Formula 1.

Brawn and Whitmarsh both believe that the sport must try to find a different rule on team orders and that the events at the German Grand Prix, which Fernando Alonso won after Felipe Massa allowed his Ferrari team-mate to pass him, were negative and damaging.

The priority is to make sure the public understand the sport and don't feel cheated by what's happened Mercedes boss Ross Brawn

"You certainly don't want a repeat of what happened," Whitmarsh told the BBC after Friday practice at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

"It's not good for the sport or for the fans, no-one really knows how we're operating. It would be good to clarify it once and for all.

"We have moved into a rule which perhaps goes against the history of F1. There are team interests, there is a constructors' world championship. So inevitably if you ask your driver not to drive into his team-mate that could be a team order.

"So it's probably better now that we clarify it. Different teams will run things differently. That's up to them."

Of the current rule on team orders, Brawn said that "everybody could see it would be very difficult to manage in an honest way, and to manage within the integrity that fans expect".

He added: "The problem stems from the [question of] what is team orders and what are you trying to achieve. It's very easy for a team to deceptively apply team orders.

"We have this problem and we have to find a way of managing it because it's unfair to pretend there are no team orders.

"It's a messy situation and the Ferrari case highlighted the situation we have. The priority is to make sure the public understand the sport and don't feel cheated by what's happened.

"It's a very difficult thing to manage and Formula 1 has got do decide what it wants to be. We need to think what the fans what."

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