At Silverstone 2011, Mark Webber was closing in on second placed Sebastian Vettel towards the end of the race. With two podium positions guaranteed, Red Bull asked Webber to maintain his position and not overtake his team-mate.
But the Australian ignored the order and attempted to overtake the young German. However despite an attempt to pass Vettel, he ultimately failed to make any move stick. Had Webber managed to get past his team-mate, he would undoubtedly have faced a backlash from his team.
Unfortunately for him, Vettel managed to pull off an overtake in similar circumstances last week without any reprimand from Red Bull.
If it’s any comfort to Webber, at least he will have three weeks to recover his composure after receiving an almighty slap in the face from Vettel at the Malaysian Grand Prix.
The Australian was leading the triple World Champion into the last portion of the Grand Prix and would not have been expecting Vettel to try to overtake him after Red Bull asked both drivers to hold position and guarantee a one-two finish. Of course Vettel had different ideas.
Webber could not be blamed for being furious. He had complied with the team’s requests down to the letter by turning his revs down but after some reflection he should not be too surprised by the fact Vettel has seemingly got away with it.
Even if it is not stipulated in his contract, the 36-year-old has been the de-facto No 2 at Red Bull since Vettel joined the team from feeder team Toro Rosso in 2009.
And since then there have been many incidents between the pair which have always ended up favouring the German with the tacit support of Team Principal Christian Horner and advisor Helmut Marko who three months ago was quoted as saying:
“For much of his career, Mark was never in a top team, but he was always regarded as a high flyer if he only could get into the right team.
"Then Red Bull puts him in a car - a possible winner - and suddenly along comes this young kid and he snatches the booty from under Mark's nose. Psychologically it's not easy, of course; this would gnaw away at anyone's confidence. It's more than understandable.”
Marko’s comments were more than a hint that Red Bull’s hierarchy do not regard Webber in the same light as their triple-World Champion Vettel.
Yet Webber signed a one year contract extension mid-way through last season despite the fact that he could look back on incidents such as Turkey 2010 to show him where he stood within the team.
Turning to Vettel, his actions in Malaysia were at best sneaky and worst underhand. But Vettel knew that despite the orders on the team radio, privately he would not be punished.
Publically, Christian Horner claimed Vettel’s move was “not acceptable” but the team’s reaction was quite muted as they tried to play it down.
But then again team orders and gentleman’s agreements have been part and parcel of Formula 1 from the beginning and they have often been broken.
One can go back to the most famous example of legendary Ferrari driver Gilles Villenueve and Didier Pironi in 1982 when the latter refused to honour a pre-race pledge not to overtake his team-mate.
Formula 1 is a strange sport in the sense that it is both a team event and competition for individuals. Because of the money involved, it will always remain a team sport so the issues that occurred at Sepang last week will reoccur from time to time.
And it will remain controversial unless Red Bull openly claim that they favour one driver as Ferrari have traditionally done, particularly during the Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso eras.
But it will be interesting to see how Webber reacts next time he is battling his team-mate for a race win. Since he knows that he is all but a person-non grata at Red Bull, perhaps he should just throw caution to the wind and ignore any team orders imposed on him.
