I’ve been sitting in bed watching “Colin McRae Pedal to the Metal” tonight.  You know, instead of doing my massive piles of other news/feature story assignments for school…

For those of you who don’t know, Scotsman Colin McRae was one of the world’s best rally drivers (WRC World Champion for Subaru in 1995) before his tragic death in a helicopter accident in 2007.  His name may be familiar to some of you gamers as the namesake of the original DiRT rallying video games.

The documentary got me thinking about the dreaded topic in Formula One: team orders.

In 1995, McRae was embroiled in a bitter title fight with his own Subaru teammate Carlos Sainz.  At the penultimate round of the World Rally Championship, Sainz held a few second lead over McRae the entire rally.  McRae was trying like hell to beat Sainz’s stage times throughout the final day of the rally when Prodrive team boss David Richards pulled him aside at a service park.  He told Colin to back off and stay in second-position so Sainz would win the rally.

Colin didn’t like that, so he disobeyed team orders and went flat out over the second-to-last stage, which put him ahead of Sainz in the running order, and one step closer to another rally victory that year, which meant one step closer to the coveted WRC crown.

Dave Richards then gave Colin the ultimatum: ‘You disobeyed team orders.  You check in to your final control point late (to receive a time penalty and fall back behind Sainz) or this will be your last rally with Subaru, ever.’ (paraphrase)

Facing the termination of his contract, Colin wisely obeyed Richards’ wishes and incurred a time penalty that enabled Sainz to win the rally…  At the final round of the year, Colin’s home round – the RAC Rally of Great Britain – he pushed as hard as possible and won the rally, and hence, the World Rally Championship for 1995.  Colin McRae was now immortalized.

This circumstance begs the question though: Why team orders at all?

In Formula One, where team orders (in various guises) have been around since the inception of Grand Prix racing, I’ve always found that team orders were acceptable.  1.) It’s tradition  2.)If I was a team principle, I wouldn’t want my two drivers to battle so hard that they take each other out of a race and have the entire team score no points at all…

It’s different in the sport of rallying, though.  Cars do not compete wheel-to-wheel.  They are only out on closed public roads, one stage at a time, one CAR at a time (usually cars launch into a stage at two-minute intervals), only battling the clock.  Whoever has the lowest stage time when all cars have run is the winner of the stage.  Combine all the times and whoever has the lowest total time wins the rally.

If there is no risk of teammates taking each other out completely, why on Earth invoke those team orders at all?  I don’t understand it.  McRae and Sainz could have both gone flat-chat and potentially have been perfectly fine in the end.  OK, I’ll admit that Colin always did have a penchant for throwing his car off the road – sometimes multiple times in the same day – but he did that all the time.  Colin never drove harder to try and beat the time of his opponents – he ALWAYS was flat out.

So I’d like to know, what are your thoughts on team orders?  They’re legal again in F1; the WRC has seen them often as well.  As covert as they may be sometimes, they’re even carried out in NASCAR, IndyCar, and every other series that has multi-car teams.

@reply me on Twitter (@TheSAABwriter), comment below, Facebook me (Cody Globig).   Help me understand WHY!

As I reported just last night in my Formula One rumor mill, the talk of Kimi Raikkonen coming back to the F1 circus is true.  Kimi signed a two-year deal with Lotus Renault GP (next year known as Team Lotus).

SPEEDtv.com’s Adam Cooper has the story:

LRGP confirmed today that Kimi Raikkonen has signed a two-year deal with the team. The outfit that is set to change its name to Team Lotus thus has a World Champion on its hands.

Raikkonen said that racing in NASCAR gave him a taste for the wheel to wheel competition that he’d been missing in rallying.

The news was not unexpected after negotiations moved rapidly when Kimi’s talks with Williams broke down, and it became clear that Robert Kubica was out of the frame for the start of the season.

It remains to be seen who will partner the 2007 champion. Vitaly Petrov has a contract while both Bruno Senna and Romain Grosjean are on standby. Against the odds there has also been contact with Adrian Sutil, despite the German’s issue with Eric Lux earlier in the year.

When he went to the WRC Kimi had ambitions to return with Red Bull Racing – something he openly admitted to this writer last year – but Mark Webber’s ongoing contract extensions put a stop that.

“I never really lost the passion in racing in F1, but maybe all the other things around it,” he said Raikkonen in a video interview. “But I did some NASCAR races this year in the States and I started to miss more and more the racing side, to race against each other, because in rallying it’s against the clock, really. That’s what I was missing.

“Then I got the call from certain people in Formula 1 and then also sorts of things happened and then in the end we managed to have a nice conversation with Lotus Renault, and ended up making a deal with them. So I’m very happy with that.

“There were two options. It was this team or Williams, and in the end everything worked out with Lotus Renault GP as we wanted, so that’s really the reason.”

Kimi insisted that there was no problem with his motivation: “I wouldn’t come back if I wouldn’t be motivated. There is always a lot of talk about the motivation, but nobody really knows what I do or what I think, apart from myself, so I don’t really care about what people say.

“I wouldn’t put my name in a contract if I wouldn’t think I would enjoy it. It will be interesting. It will be exciting to get back.”

Raikkonen said he would feel more at home in F1 after struggling to come to terms with the WRC.

“It’s been really nice in the last few years, trying to learn it. It’s been easier this year than it was last year, but still it’s a very difficult. But I’m really looking forward to coming back, at least F1 is something that I know how everything works.

“I’ve been there for many years. When I went to rallying I didn’t really know what would happen, and when I went to NASCAR I had no clue how it would be. In that way it should be much, much easier to come back. It should be pretty normal.”

Team owner Gerard Lopez added: “All year long, we kept saying that our team was at the start of a brand new cycle. Backstage we’ve been working hard to build the foundations of a successful structure and to ensure that we would soon be able to fight at the highest level. Kimi’s decision to come back to Formula 1 with us is the first step of several announcements which should turn us into an even more serious contender in the future.

“Of course, we are all looking forward to working with a world champion. On behalf of our staff, I’d like to welcome Kimi to Enstone, a setting that has always been known for its human approach to Formula 1.”

Now, I’ve always been a huge fan of the Iceman, as Kimi’s known.  He may not be the most well-spoken man in the history of motorsport, but he’s a damn good driver and he’s Finnish – I have a love affair with all things Finland.  So here’s to having Kimi back, the boring one-word interview answers, the ease with which he can pilot a car quicker than everyone else, and the overall cool factor that is Kimi Raikkonen.

First off, sorry for my absence of late. Since I work in retail and am a senior in college I’ve been busier than a fly on a carcass…  -Cody

After a long Formula One season of very much the same old thing, the Brazilian Grand Prix on Sunday provided us with a bit of a change of pace.

Sebastian Vettel aced qualifying as usual, so the weekend started out pretty much as usual. Oh, except for the record breaking that is. Coming into the Brazilian GP, Vettel had gone P1 in qualifying 14 times this year, tying the record set by Nigel Mansell in 1992. Seb remarked simply, “Just call me Nigel,” after winning his 15th and final pole of the year on Saturday at Interlagos.  And he said he didn’t care about records… Ha!

The race set off to notices sent by race director Charlie Whiting that rain was possible by half-distance.  Steve Matchett on the SPEEDtv broadcast also remarked that the various teams’ weathermen were Tweeting updates on the rain movement nearing the circuit just 10 or so laps in. The first round of pit stops , for most teams, was being delayed as long as it could so teams would only have to change from the soft tire to wets (by rule negating the need to run the Prime hard tire).

Ferrari Tweeted that rain was 10 minutes out, then Alonso promptly pitted and changed onto Primes. Matchett was rather humorously flustered at the boneheaded decision, but the strategy worked out for the Scuderia as the rain never came.

Drama played out throughout the race starting from only 5 laps in when Vettel’s gearbox quickly began to lose oil.  Seb nursed the car home, taking each corner a gear higher than normal and short-shifting.  He let 2nd placed teammate Mark Webber by going into turn 1 so as to not screw up Red Bull’s chances of a good race.

Webber went on to score his first and only win of the season.  Red Bull team boss Christian Horner remarked after the race that Vettel’s gearbox was actually completely out of oil by the time the race had ended.  No one knows how he made it work, but Vettel finished 2nd anyway.

The World Championship was wrapped up with 4 races left in the season, but the battle for the remaining positions went down to the wire.  The biggest win of the Brazilian GP was Team Lotus’ (next year “Team Caterham”) placement in 10th of the Constructors’ World Championship. Placing 10th means that Team Lotus/Caterham goes from receiving around $8 million to nearly $30 million in Championship payouts.

Final Driver Point Standings

Final Constructor Point Standings

In other F1 news, silly season has now kicked into high gear. TodayPatrick Head, co-founder of Williams GP announced his retirement from F1. He will now be focused on Williams’ Hybrid Power division of the company.  The rumor mill is going crazy about Kimi Raikkonen being close to signing a deal to come back to Formula One next year with either Williams or Lotus-Renault GP.  LRGP boss Eric Boullier said over the weekend that their final announcement is imminent.  Adrian Sutil is most likely headed out to pasture as his contract with Force India F1 is over.  Jerome D’Ambrisio is out at Marussia Virgin Racing as the team has signed Charles Pic to drive alongside veteran Timo Glock in 2012.  Rubens Barrichello is hell bent on driving for Williams again in 2012, but we’re waiting to see what will become of that.