Felipe Massa won’t face any punishment from Ferrari after he chose to ignore a team order to allow team-mate Fernando Alonso to pass early on in the Japanese Grand Prix.
The Brazilian has qualified ahead of Massa and got a good start to stay there, but after just a few laps, his race engineer Rob Smedley radioed the following: “Multifunction strategy A. Multifunction strategy A. Now please”.
Massa admitted after the race that it was in fact a team order to allow Alonso past, but he chose to ignore it.
“I am never happy with an instruction,” he said. “It was not an instruction when he overtook me on the track. The instruction came much earlier.”
Team principal Stefano Domenicali denied Massa would face any sanctions and they would continue to support him until his last race with them in Brazil.
“At the end of the day Fernando overtook him on the track,” he said. “For sure Felipe is trying to be as quick as possible and I understand his feelings. He will find the team totally supporting him up until the end of the season with no problem.
“Today we brought home what was the maximum and there is no story to create around these things because there are other things we need to focus on, including how we are going to improve the car up to the end of the championship.”
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