F1: Ferrari won’t discipline Felipe Massa for ignoring team orders

Felipe Massa won’t be disciplined by Ferrarri for ignoring team orders during the Japanese Grand Prix.

Stefano Domenicali says Felipe will not be reprimanded for ignoring the team during yesterdays Grand Prix, refusing to let Fernando Alonso past.

Massa was running ahead of team-mate Fernando Alonso during the early stages of Sunday’s race when his engineer Rob Smedley told him over Ferrari’s pits-to-car radio: “Multi-function strategy A, multi-function strategy A. Now please!”

That message was believed to be code instructing Massa to move aside in order to allow the Spaniard to pass, but the Brazilian, who will not be retained by the team next season, opted to ignore the order.

Team Principal Domenicali was asked about the incident after the race, but insisted he will not speak to the 32-year-old about the matter as the team have more important issues to focus on.

“No not really,” he told the assembled media when asked if it was an issue.

“To be honest with you we brought home today what was the maximum and there is no point in creating something around these things as there are other things that we need to focus on to try and improve the car up to the end of the championship.”

Alonso, who later passed Massa in any case, echoed the views of his boss and vowed there are no problems between himself and Massa.

“We cannot make a big thing out of it,” said the Spaniard.

“We are racing and whatever we did we would have finished in the same position because we could not achieve anything more. I don’t know exactly what happened, but there is zero problem.

“We are trying to do our best fairly – me, the team – to score as many points as possible and sometimes it is not easy when the performance is not super. It is never easy when we are fighting for seventh and eighth place.”