While Mercedes employed team orders to good avail during the Italian Grand Prix, engineering a win against the odds for Lewis Hamilton their championship rivals Ferrari failed to do so and paid the price at Monza.
Mercedes used Valtteri Bottas to back race leader, at the time, Kimi Raikkonen into a hard chasing Hamilton and thus helping the Briton to dispatch the Ferrari driver late on in the race to claim an unlikely, albeit sensational victory at Monza.
Ferrari, who in the past have not hesitated to use team orders when the need arose, could have given Sebastian Vettel the benefit of the final tow in qualifying on Saturday, instead Raikkonen got the vital slipstream from his teammate and claimed pole by a tenth of a second.
On Sunday at the start, Raikkonen and Vettel could have played ball but they tripped each other up in Turn 1 and by the first chicane were in trouble as Vettel spun, Hamilton chased, Raikkonen fought but in the end ran out of rubber and the World Champion pounced to take famous victory.
After the race Ferrari chief Maurizio Arrivabene was asked why the Scuderia neglected team orders on a weekend when they were most needed, he replied, "We hire drivers not butlers, even if we wanted to give the order to the team it would have been impossible, it is very dangerous and crazy to give it at the start, if possible in the course of the race."
"Defending on two opponents is not easy. I know what we have to do, I do not want to criticise others," added the Ferrari team chief with reference to Vettel dropping down the order leaving Raikkonen fend of the Mercs.
"The car is not inferior to the Mercedes, we must not give up, now it is important to analyse the data and understand what happened, the gap of 30 points in the drivers and 20 in the constructors is a lot but if you go out of the track are 25 points that fly away."
"The reliability will be very important and above all the determination, we must work focused on our objectives and stay calm," added Arrivabene.
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