Let Them Race Said Team Mercedes Fans in Twitter

Giancarlo Perlas August 28, 2014

Around 19 hours ago, Mercedes AMG Petronas tweeted the million-dollar question that has been generating a lot of buzz on the Internet and the F1 community. In the official Twitter account of the team, it asked the opinion of fans whether they should allow their drivers to freely race or is it time to finally implement team orders.

Almost instantaneously, fans poured in their opinions. Just five hours after Mercedes tweeted the question, an answer was determined. Those in favor of the free racing led a landslide victory against the ones who supported team orders. Mercedes revealed in a latter tweet that 92 percent of the respondents preferred free racing while the remaining eight percent had team orders in mind.

The survey obviously intended to address the brewing issue surrounding the management of team Mercedes following the incident in Belgium during the last race, wherein Nico Rosberg clipped the W05 of Lewis Hamilton. It even posted pictures of the clash in its tweets.

While Rosberg got away with it and he incurred no penalties from the stewards, people in his team were apparently furious over his stunt. The event once again raised speculations that Mercedes is being pressured to impose team orders on the remaining races of the season.

Next, the team followed up the results with a series of questions, wherein it solicited the opinion of fans about how the team should handle drivers who break the “no contact” rule, and to those in favor of team orders, how would the team implement them.

As for the first follow up question, a lot of fans recommended a race ban for the offending party. Others advised letting the driver pay the damage. The other question just garnered a mixed reaction and majority of people simply objected the idea of team orders instead of directly answering the query.

Lastly, Mercedes asked whether it should suspend a driver and not maximize constructors’ points or it should rather set the order at qualifying slots. Most were in favor of suspension or having a reserve take the place of the offending driver.