Massa: Very sad for a driver, you obey but it destroys you

There has been much sympathy for Bottas, while Hamilton went to great lengths to decry the practice, insisting that he hates 'winning' in this manner, but Mercedes team chief Toto Wolff decided to be "the bad guy and not the idiot" when he pushed the button.

Speaking to Corriere della Serra, Massa said of the team orders dished out at Sochi Autodrom on Sunday, "Changing the course of a race is never a good thing, but it's part of the game."

"Perhaps with 40 points lead there was not a great need to swap them, but everyone is free to choose what they want to do. Maybe at Ferrari this year those types of tactics have been lacking. I don't like it either but as long as the rules allow for team orders it will continue."

"Losing a race through no fault of your own hurts, I did it twice with [Kimi] Raikkonen and [Fernando] Alonso," revealed the Brazilian.

Famously at the 2010 German Grand Prix, Ferrari gave Massa the now infamous command: "Fernando is faster than you. Can you confirm you understand that message?"

Massa recalled, "For me, it was a very bad situation, we were not even halfway through the championship and that race was mine. It's very sad for a driver, you obey but it destroys you."

This at a time (in 2010) when team orders were NOT allowed as per the rules of the day, thus no surprise that the soon to be Formula E driver does not believe banning the practice is a solution, "It would not change much. They would circumvent the ban with codes or plot everything beforehand."

On the upside, Massa added, "I allowed my teammate [Raikkonen] to pass me in Brazil [season fianle] which made him 2007 Formula 1 World Champion and it was the right thing to do even if the team had not asked."

"It has given me great pain, but team orders are part of Formula 1," insisted 11-time grand prix winner.