Mika Häkkinen believes that teams will have to be extremely cautious before imposing on their drivers orders likely to influence the fight for the 2026 world title.
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The two-time world champion warns that with the importance taken by fan communities around each driver, a too harsh decision could provoke a very strong reaction.
Kimi Antonelli currently leads the championship with a 59-point advantage over George Russell and Lewis Hamilton, while Lando Norris is 83 points behind after having revived his title defense thanks to his wins in the last two races.
Beware of the fans’ reaction
With 11 rounds to go, Hamilton has a 28-point lead over Charles Leclerc at Ferrari, while Norris leads Oscar Piastri by 55 points at McLaren. Given these gaps, the question of possible team orders in favor of the highest-placed driver naturally begins to arise.
For Häkkinen, this issue has become more sensitive than in his time: “Which team will decide to make this kind of change, and what arguments will it give to the fans? This will be an important factor, the Finn explains to Sky Sports News. All these drivers today have an immense fan base worldwide. If a team ever decides that a driver becomes number two, the fans will crucify that team. So you have to be very careful today in the way you apply this type of orders.”
The question of orders had already been talked about during the Dutch Grand Prix. Hamilton had expressed his frustration after being held behind Leclerc, while Mercedes had on its side asked Russell to let Antonelli pass after adapting the Italian’s strategy to respond to the threat of the seven-time world champion.
Häkkinen understands Hamilton’s frustration
Hamilton then apologized for the tone used on the radio and in his post-race statements, but Häkkinen believes his reaction was perfectly understandable.
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“I think what Lewis experienced at Zandvoort was then explained by the team, he says. Lewis’s emotions, with his experience, were absolutely normal. Maybe it wasn’t even just emotion, but also common sense: ‘We can score more points if you let me pass!'”
The former McLaren driver also points out that drivers have less information than engineers or viewers: “Today, when I watch the Grand Prix from the outside or when I am in the paddock, it’s different. You see a lot more things, you receive a lot more information about what is happening. “
“Drivers only have a very small part of the information we receive on television, he points out. So when they follow another car that doesn’t let them pass, they don’t have all the data and calculations from the team. That’s why we often see this kind of reaction, and it’s very normal.”
A different philosophy from the Schumacher era
Häkkinen also looked back at his own battle against Michael Schumacher in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The Finn had won the 1998 and 1999 titles before finishing second behind Schumacher in 2000, the year of the first of the Ferrari driver’s five consecutive titles.
According to him, the Scuderia then much more clearly assumed an internal hierarchy around Schumacher: “The fan base has changed in Formula 1, the generation is different compared to my time. When I raced against Michael Schumacher when he was at Ferrari, they started applying team orders from the first race of the season.”
“It was obvious that if a driver was very strong in a team, started winning races and scoring points, the team knew that if it wanted to win the world championship, it had to support that driver 100 %, he concludes. That’s what Michael Schumacher managed to get at Ferrari.”
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