What are team orders?

Team orders are instructions given by a race team to their drivers that prioritize the team's overall interests over a driver's individual on-track battle. Essentially, the team directing how its cars should race each other or manage a situation for the team's collective benefit.

Common forms of team orders

• "Hold position": Telling a driver not to race or attack a teammate ahead of them, usually to avoid risking a crash between teammates or to preserve a favorable finishing order.

• Letting a teammate past: One driver is told to move aside for a teammate, often because that teammate is faster, on a different strategy, or has a better shot at the win/championship.

• Prioritizing a championship contender: If one driver is fighting for a season title and their teammate isn't, the team may instruct the non-contending driver to support the title-contending teammate (e.g., not fighting them for position, or even swapping positions to help their points total).

• Strategic instructions: Telling a driver to manage pace, save fuel/tires, or adjust their race to benefit the team's overall strategy (like protecting track position for a pit stop sequence) rather than just their individual best result.

Why teams use them

• Some championships (F1's Constructors' Championship being the classic example) are scored using both drivers' results combined, so teams have a direct incentive to manage how their two cars interact to maximize total points, not just one driver's individual result.

• Avoiding crash risk between teammates is a major factor. A team would rather have an orderly finish than risk both cars colliding and scoring zero points.

• Supporting a title-contending driver with the team's collective effort is common in the closing stages of a close championship battle.

Controversy

Team orders are one of the most contentious topics in motorsport, especially in F1, because they can undermine the pure sporting spirit of "may the best driver win".

A crackdown on team orders was introduced after the 2002 Austrian GP, where Rubens Barrichello was ordered to let Ferrari teammate Michael Schumacher past for the win just before the finish line, sparking huge backlash. This led team orders being banned outright from 2003 to 2010.

The ban was lifted after 2010 following the "Crashgate" scandal at Singapore in 2028 (when Renault’s Nelson Piquet Jr. was ordered to crash deliberately to trigger a safety car that ultimately helped teammate Fernando Alonso win), as well as other controversial team order moments l(ike Ferrari's coded "Fernando is faster than you" message to Felipe Massa in 2010), because the ban proved unenforceable. Teams found ways to achieve the same effect through coded radio messages, so F1's governing body decided it was better to allow explicit team orders rather than force teams into deceptive workarounds.

Fans and pundits are often split: Some see team orders as a legitimate and necessary part of team-based competition (the championship is genuinely a team effort), while others feel it robs fans of pure wheel-to-wheel racing between title contenders.

Other series

• NASCAR has had its own team orders controversies, most notably "Spingate" in 2013, where Michael Waltrip Racing was caught manipulating race positions (including a deliberate spin) to help a teammate qualify for the playoffs. This resulted in NASCAR imposing heavy penalties and reinforcing rules against actions that manipulate race outcomes.

• Endurance racing (Le Mans, WEC, IMSA) frequently uses team orders too, especially between multiple cars from the same team competing for an overall or class win, coordinating which car gets priority strategy or track position late in a race.

• IndyCar explicitly prohibits team orders. Under Rule 9.3.4 ("Team Tactics and/or Team Orders"), the series states that team tactics or team orders are actions or omissions by one or more members to artificially influence, affect, alter, and/or otherwise interfere with the normal course of an on-track event, and IndyCar reserves the right to issue a penalty to any or all of the members, including any or all of a team's car/driver combinations if it determines a team engaged in this.

This isn't just theoretical. Going into the 2022 championship-deciding race, IndyCar reiterated the rule specifically to keep Team Penske and Chip Ganassi Racing from manipulating the outcome via things like having their drivers help each other or hinder their rivals, or even the old trick of adding a few extra seconds to a pit stop to allow a teammate to leapfrog another.

That said, subtler forms have happened historically. For example, in 2010 at Edmonton, Ganassi's Scott Dixon won amid a controversial penalty on a rival, allowing teammate Dario Franchitti to finish third and bolster the team's championship standing. But IndyCar's stance today is much stricter than F1's "it's allowed, just don't be blatant about it" approach.

Manufacturer-level cooperation (not just the same team)

This is a huge and largely accepted part of NASCAR strategy, especially at superspeedways (Daytona, Talladega), even between cars from completely different teams as long as they share a manufacturer (Chevrolet, Ford, Toyota):

• Manufacturer alliances: Teams that share a manufacturer often work together even without common ownership. Different teams that share the same manufacturer often work together in an alliance. For example, Wood Brothers Racing has a technical alliance with Team Penske (both Ford), which extends to on-track cooperation too.

• Drafting/pushing by manufacturer: On superspeedways, drivers frequently rely on manufacturer teammates to draft and push each other toward the front, since going it alone in the draft is a huge disadvantage. A driver needs all the help he can get from teammates or drivers from the same manufacturer to have a shot at taking the checkered flag. Take the 2025 Daytona 500 as a recent example. Chevrolet-affiliated drivers from multiple different teams (Hendrick Motorsports, Richard Childress Racing) blocked for Chevy driver William Byron during a chaotic final-lap incident, helping shield him from Ford and Toyota rivals as he advanced from ninth to win – without triggering any NASCAR penalty, since this kind of manufacturer cooperation is broadly accepted as part of superspeedway racing.

The line NASCAR does enforce is against outright race manipulation rather than manufacturer cooperation itself. The infamous "Spingate" scandal (2013) is the clearest example: Michael Waltrip Racing had one driver deliberately spin to trigger a caution and another pit unnecessarily, purely to manipulate the standings and get teammate Martin Truex Jr. into the playoffs.

NASCAR responded with what was at the time the largest penalty in series history – 50-point deductions and fines for the team – while cooperative drafting/blocking among manufacturer-mates during normal racing remains a completely accepted, even expected, strategic norm.