In Hungary

Formula 1 is in a fix. Over team orders. To keep the ban as it is or bin it - that's the question.

Or is there a middle way that would see the sport's law-makers provide a clarification that would specify precisely the circumstances when a team would be allowed to apply team orders and when they wouldn't?

Over the last two days here at the Hungaroring, I've canvassed opinion among leading members of teams in the pit-lane - team principals, team managers, technical directors and managing directors - who, it has to be said, all have their own agendas and specific team interests.

The first finding to report is that nobody has a ready-made solution!

Significantly, the issue wasn't even on the agenda at Wednesday's meeting of the Formula 1 Teams' Association's Sporting Regulations Working Group. It was suggested, in the wake of the furore at last weekend's German Grand Prix that it should be discussed, but it wasn't added.

An overwhelming majority of the figures I consulted believed that Ferrari deserved further punishment.

And the majority view was that most suitable penalty, in addition to their $100,000 fine, was the loss of Ferrari's 43 points in the constructors' championship at Hockenheim.
The drivers, however, would retain theirs.

"How can you impose a really strict penalty for an offence that we all know the teams commit?" said one team executive.

Some thought a suspended race ban should also apply but, perhaps surprisingly, there was no call for another much heavier fine in line with the punishment handed out in 2002 after Ferrari's conduct at the Austrian Grand Prix.

Then, there was no rule outlawing team orders but the FIA imposed the $1m sanction because they ruled that the podium incident involving Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello had brought the sport into disrepute.

The only unanimous view I came across in all discussions is that rule needed to be clarified because team orders have always been, and will always be part of the fabric of F1.

So, if that's the case, surely it would make most sense for the sport to erase article 39.1 and allow team orders.

That would mean fans, the media and the authorities would know what to expect and there wouldn't be the outrage that surrounded last weekend's result.

"No", said one team principal. "There needs to be a deterrent. Otherwise you'll have another Austria 2002 when there was no ban on team orders yet Ferrari made the sport look stupid."

Support for that opinion came from one of the pit-lane's most experienced technical directors, who cited three examples of team orders which reflected what's acceptable and what is not.

"When (Felipe) Massa helped (Kimi) Raikkonen to victory in Brazil in 2007, and as a result the title, that was entirely understandable, entirely right," my source said.

"Massa couldn't win the title but his team-mate could. It was the last race of the season. And Ferrari explained it properly.

"Austria 2002 was blatantly wrong. It was only the sixth race of the season and Schumacher was already well ahead in the championship. He had no need for assistance.

"Then you had Hockenheim last weekend, and that's somewhere in the middle of the range. Alonso was clearly quicker and is their best bet for the championship.

"What made it so messy was the way Ferrari handled things after the race. It was a farce. They treated the public so stupidly."

But given the current ban, how else could Ferrari explain the Massa-Alonso switch, without openly admitting they had broken the rules?

As it is, another senior technical director believes the stewards got it wrong in Hockenheim.

He claims a more meaningful, damaging penalty for Ferrari would have been a 10-second time penalty for Alonso, which would have relegated him from first to third, promoting Massa to victory.

None of the people I've spoken to this week thought Ferrari got it right in Germany - and yet privately all will tell you that their biggest offence was not imposing the order on Massa but carrying it out so blatantly.

As one team official put it bluntly: "It comes down to how well we can cheat the fans, because if we do it well, under this current rule, nobody knows."

When I pressed for a form of words or a mechanism that allowed for team orders in certain circumstances, only in the final third of the season as some have suggested, nobody had a recommendation.

The same source indicated that drafting the sporting regulations could become a legal minefield with officials challenging the scope of the rule - "interfering with the race result" - in the same way that engineers challenge the technical regulations.

"Everything we do can interfere with the race result. What about the Red Bull front wing at Silverstone, for example? Only for Vettel, not for Webber."

Prompted by a leading technical director, I checked out the 1998 ruling from the World Motor Sport Council following McLaren switch between David Coulthard and Mika Hakkinen at the Australian Grand Prix that year.

The FIA verdict read as follows: "It is perfectly legitimate for a team to decide that one of its drivers is the championship contender and the other will support him.

"What is not acceptable in the world council's view is any arrangement which interferes with the race and cannot be justified by the relevant team's interest in the championship."

This ruling stood until the end of 2002 when the ban was imposed.

As discussed in Andrew Benson's blog after the race on Sunday, there's a contradiction in F1 over team orders.

It's not so much what the teams do, it's how they do it.

In that context, it's hardly surprising that Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo would criticise the sport's "hypocrisy".

While the teams continue to believe in their unwritten rule which flies in the face of the official ruling, this latest controversy surely will not be the last.

And if the World Council isn't going to meet until 10 September - the Friday of the Italian Grand Prix, of all days - it guarantees that we'll all be watching the action even more closely.

By guaranteeing that he will be driving in Formula 1 in 2011, Michael Schumacher has at least silenced the growing speculation that his comeback would be a one-year wonder.

But the doubters and the critics remain to be convinced that he will ever recapture the brilliance that set him apart from his rivals and took him to a record haul of seven world titles.

Even a number of current drivers appear to be unimpressed by what they have seen of him over the first half of the season.

Lewis Hamilton, for example, yesterday described the Mercedes pairing of Schumacher and Nico Rosberg as "two solid drivers".

When asked whether he thought Schumacher had made it difficult for him to overtake in the rain in this year's Chinese Grand Prix, he just smiled broadly, paused then said: "If you think that, that's your opinion."

Jenson Button admitted that he "didn't expect him to be struggling at this stage".

Speaking privately, another championship contender who raced against him before he retired in 2006 firmly believes that the German will never be the supreme force he formerly was.

Not surprisingly, it being the German Grand Prix, this weekend has a very strong Schumacher focus.

It's the first time since his return to F1 that he is racing in front of grandstands which became a Rhineland forest of flags and banners in his honour during his championship years.

But what's given the attention such momentum is the level of Schumacher's performance in 2010. He's beaten his team-mate just twice in 10 races, and been out-qualified eight times. Hardly champion form.

And Schumacher knows that. Some 109 points off Hamilton's championship lead, he's understandably ruled himself out of championship contention this year.

Yet he remains adamant that his unwavering aim to win an eighth world title next season is entirely plausible.

On one level, that attitude is entirely expected. This is, after all, Michael Schumacher we're talking about - one of the greatest drivers the world has ever seen, a man who never knew when he was beaten, and who was able to rise above uncompetitive machinery or treacherous conditions, or a combination of both, and still come out on top.

But on another level is Schumacher kidding himself, and only adding to the expectation which he has frequently described as being "unrealistic"?

Can he ever hit the high notes like he did before he retired - or is he just going to have to accept an unaccustomed place within the pack, albeit F1's most competitive pack in almost two decades?

It's hard to think of a classic Schumacher move this season, isn't it?

That pass on Fernando Alonso at the final corner in Monaco owed more to opportunism than outrageous talent, and, of course, was later penalised.

He's admitted that he's not at the level he wants, still unable to get the maximum out of the new narrower front tyres.

The 2010 cars don't suit his more aggressive style of driving, where he prefers to turn in to a corner with massive front grip. Currently he's not finding the downforce he needs. He's losing out particularly in the slower corners, which require precision and technique under these new conditions.

"He's having to get used to feeling a tyre, controlling a tyre and finding the best way to get lap times from a tyre," Ross Brawn, his Mercedes team principal, has told BBC Sport in an interview to be broadcast on BBC One this weekend.

"He's finding it pretty challenging and we're not getting the results we expect."

Another team source has told me that Schumacher can't overload the tyres like he used to. It means he ends up fighting the car and over-driving to make up time which he can see he's losing to his team-mate.

That causes errors like the one which wrecked his final qualifying lap at Silverstone, where until the third part of the session he'd been the quicker Mercedes driver.

He was around three tenths of a second off Rosberg in the first race, and despite improvements at Spain, when a longer wheelbase car was introduced, and at Turkey, the gap has not closed.

Similarly, by trying to ride the kerbs like he used to, Schumacher has damaged the chassis. He's now on his third of the season.

Lack of testing has clearly handicapped him. "It's been a big challenge for him," according to Brawn, who supervised so many of the endless miles Schumacher put in around Ferrari's Fiorano test track, working his way through problems.

"I know when a lot of Michelin teams went on the Bridgestones (tyres in 2007), it took them six months to get competitive again - and some drivers suffered more than others in that phase," said Brawn.

More time in the car would be one part of the solution but the regulations don't presently allow for that.

Nor can Schumacher easily make up for the three seasons he was out of the cockpit.

Rubens Barrichello, only three years younger and a former team-mate, says he's driving better than ever but he's been involved in all the crucial phases of an F1 car's evolution in that time and as a result, he's been able to adapt to the frequent changes.

Schumacher, by contrast, stopped, and switched off that part of his life, and you can't just flick it back on.

But there is another view - expressed to me this week by two rival engineers, one of whom worked alongside Schumacher at Ferrari - that will raise howls of protest among the huge Schumacher fan club.

Their theory is that the seven-time champion's reactions have suffered in his time away from the sport. They believe he's finding it tougher to keep the balance of the car because he's not able to react quickly enough.

Both sources have completed sports science studies which showed how a sportsman's reflexes deteriorated from his late thirties onwards.

Schumacher's enthusiasm, commitment, knowledge and determination remain as sharp as ever but the whole racing package is not at its previous peak.

Damon Hill told us before Silverstone that nobody should write off Michael Schumacher, given his past achievements.

But under current conditions, it's hard to see him leading the way in the manner that he, and we, became accustomed to.

Now, it may be that Mercedes will produce a more competitive car for 2011 and Pirelli, which takes over from Bridgestone, will produce tyres that he can understand better.

If that's the case, then what a prospect - Schumacher in the mix alongside Alonso, Hamilton, Vettel, Button, Webber and company.

On the other hand, it could be that F1 has seen the best of him - just like Lance Armstrong on his final Tour de France; seven times a winner but not once on his comeback.

What a difference a year makes - not just for Silverstone, with its grand prix future guaranteed well into the next decade, but for McLaren, Formula 1's championship leaders at the midway point of the year.

From the depths of the 2009 early season debacle - when Lewis Hamilton was lapped here and struggled in third last - the Woking-based team now believe they could be on the verge of seizing the title initiative if their new exhaust-blown diffuser performs on track as expected.

For the first time in 2010, team insiders are targeting pole position on merit.
Hamilton's qualifying success in Canada last month owed much to circuit-specific characteristics - their extra F-duct-inspired straight-line speed worked to the MP4-25's advantage.

This weekend, however, McLaren have arrived at their home race, around the new Silverstone layout, with their "biggest upgrade of the season" as one engineer put it to me. They anticipate their first genuine challenge to Red Bull (pioneers of the 2010 blown diffuser) in Saturday's qualifying hour.

"If it (new diffuser) works, it'll be amazing," said one insider.

But is it really worth that much, I asked, mindful of how Red Bull team principal, Christian Horner and McLaren managing director, Jonathan Neale, had downplayed its impact?

"Oh yes," I was told. By two separate insiders. "It could make a difference of at least half a second." Both sources couldn't hide their smiles as they made their predictions.

Those words have a familiar ring to them as Red Bull's rivals attempt to catch up with Adrian Newey's brilliant design.

Without doubt, for example, Ferrari made strides at the last race in Valencia when they introduced their first version of the blown diffuser.

They were quickest in Friday practice, produced their strongest qualifying since the opening round in Bahrain and would surely have scored many more points in the race if they had not come unstuck behind the safety car.

Then again, Mercedes came to Spain with similarly high hopes of their diffuser but got burned - literally - because the exhaust gases overheated the suspension at the rear of the car. The team ended up modifying the changes and found themselves compromised on performance.

McLaren were well aware of their rivals' discomfort in the next-door garage in Valencia and their caution was justified during Friday practice.

Red Bull set the pace in both sessions, Sebastian Vettel in the morning, Mark Webber (in Vettel's cast-off chassis) in the afternoon.
The pair seemed able to exploit their pace at will in response to the rest of the field, with one engineer believing their domination could yet match that of Barcelona in May!

Despite leaving the track twice off the bump at the new Abbey corner, Hamilton and McLaren enjoyed a solid morning workout, second fastest.

But for the afternoon practice, the team changed the suspension on both cars and ended up going slower.

"Disaster" was the muttered verdict from one member of Jenson Button's side of the garage.

My information is that both drivers raised the same complaints about the set-up.

So yet again, McLaren face the prospect of a long night's analysis if they're to achieve the front-line showing they believe the cars are capable of.

Having had no testing apart from a straight-line aero run in Spain, my source had warned, "there are doubts because exhaust gases are so unpredictable. You can't see them. The airflow is so difficult to manage and direct."

The designers have also had to modify the cooling system to accommodate the increased temperatures around the new diffuser.

Changing the level of downforce at the rear of the car calls for changes at the front too, hence the new front wing.

Contrary to Mark Webber's belief that McLaren were sandbagging, one rival engineer claims that actually Ferrari were the team who were disguising their true pace.

The Italian team have brought a second version of their blown diffuser for this weekend.

And both Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa were lapping consistently on heavy and light fuel loads.

The stakes are getting higher as the season progresses, and both McLaren's ambitious drivers are aware of that.

Hamilton - who won here so memorably in 2008 - and Jenson Button - who is yet to finish on the podium in front of his home crowd - have made clear to the team that they need the new parts, and they need them to work if they are to maintain their momentum in the title race.

Red Bull may not have brought a significant upgrade package for this race - like they've done every other race since the Spanish Grand Prix - but their new diffuser looks to have taken them another step forward.

Two Red Bull engineers I spoke to after Sebastian Vettel's impressive victory in Valencia were adamant that they would repeat their 2009 one-two finish here.

Even allowing for the slower corners on the new layout, Silverstone's abundance of higher speed corners, particularly through Copse, Maggotts and Becketts in the first sector of the circuit, will bring the best out of the RB6.

All of which means Red Bull remain the moving target the rest of the grid is aiming at.

For the moment.

One former technical director with experience at three top teams claimed that the McLaren "steamroller" had the greater resources to maximise their performance over a championship run-in.

And because of that, he had no hesitation in predicting that if McLaren can surprise Red Bull and win on Sunday, they will go on to win the 2010 world championship.

UPDATE, SATURDAY, 0915 BST:

McLaren's decision to abandon the blown diffuser, which they made early evening on Friday, is undoubtedly a setback for their hopes this weekend.

Even worse than the overheating problems caused by the exhaust gases, they have brought a major upgrade to the racetrack and it has not delivered the performance they expected.

That, of course, is in marked contrast to Ferrari's experience in Valencia, when the device worked straightaway - and has added performance to the car at Silverstone this weekend as well.

McLaren now have just one hour's practice to find a balance and a set-up on the car around Silverstone's new layout.

Speaking to two of the team's leading engineers, I'm told they have had to revise their ambitions for pole position but remain hopeful that their new front wing will enable them to challenge Red Bull in the race.

This little hiccup demonstrates the fine margins all teams are working within as they race to develop their cars faster than each other.

The consolation for Hamilton and Button is that if any team can recover from this setback, it is McLaren.

UPDATE, SATURDAY, 1820 BST:

Even with a fully functioning blown diffuser, McLaren would have struggled to find nearly a second's worth of performance on Red Bull, who are as far ahead of their rivals as they were at Barcelona, a circuit with similar demands to Silverstone.

Lewis Hamilton's place on the second row was pure quality, a reflection of driver talent to get the most out of inferior equipment which seemed to defeat his team-mate.

Unless Alonso or Hamilton can make telling moves on the opening lap, it's hard to see Red Bull being beaten on Sunday.

If that's the case, Sebastian Vettel could head for his home race as championship leader for the first time.