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Ferrari were accused of cheating after the team asked Felipe Massa to allow Fernando Alonso past and lead a one-two victory in Germany.

Team orders have been outlawed in Formula One since 2002, when Ferrari stage-managed the result of that year's Austrian Grand Prix in Michael Schumacher's favour. It's a difficult thing to police, with many teams using codes to issue instructions. But there was little code used when Massa's engineer, Rob Smedley, told his man: "Fernando is faster than you. Can you confirm you understand this message?" After Massa yielded on lap 49, Smedley radioed "sorry".

Team boss Stefano Domenicalli denies this was an order, merely a "briefing on the situation."

It comes one year to the day that Massa nearly died on-track in Budapest. It would have been a wonderful reward. On the podium, Felipe looked like he needed a hug. When Alonso took the chequered flag he was quick to ask his team "how is Felipe?"

Ferrari needed this win after months of lackluster results. It was an impressive display, with Red Bull hardly getting a look in and the field lapped up to seventh place.
 
But rival teams are set to protest the result and the FIA are investigating. This could be a test of Jean Todt's presidency. In the post-race press conference there was no applause - a few boos and some tough questions aimed at Alonso. Massa stated that he had been struggling on the hard compound tyres, which allowed Alonso past. But he put his real message across when he said: "I'm professional, and today I showed how professional I am. Everybody saw today I can win races."

Alonso was 31 points ahead of Massa coming into this weekend, and is therefore Ferrari's main hope when it comes to the title. Therefore, Ferrari will argue it was a pragmatic decision. Leading up to the position change, Domenicalli was waving his arms around as he sat on the pitwall, while chief engineer Chris Dyer urged his boss to wait. Once Alonso went P1, the Ferrari brass sat in silence with their arms crossed.

"We have seen team mates crash into each other, losing 42 points. Today Ferrari has 42 points in the pocket," Alonso justified.

For Smedley, it was a difficult day. On the slow-down lap, the Yorkshireman shared some kind words: "Felipe Massa is back in business. Very magnanimous. You won't have any idea what that word means, but I'll explain it to you later..."
 

Sebastian Vettel's front wing had a double vane on the outer end plate, while Mark Webber's was a single vane. That's all, not an earth shattering difference. Christian Horner argues it offered nothing more than a characteristics change, others say it was worth a tenth. Either way, it wasn't a huge step forward, but the team has allowed this little bit of carbon fibre to become a smoking gun.

McLaren couldn't resist sticking the knife in. "We try very hard to give the drivers the same equipment at the same time. That's important," said Martin Whitmarsh. "I think the cohesiveness of the team is such that you don't need to set up those sorts of tensions. You can't really do that. And if you're in a very strong position then I think you have to make sure you hold it together."

It wasn't Seb's fault his wing came detached in practice, but to physically unscrew the other updated wing from Mark's car and give it to his rival was, in my opinion, unfair to the Australian and totally de-motivating to his side of the garage. More than that, it was stupid because it's reopened the scab from Turkey, compounding the perception that Helmut Marko and Dietrich Mateschitz only want to see Vettel win. The trouble is, if Seb wins thanks to boardroom backing, that won't play well with the fans. It is sensationally bad PR for the team and for the brand.

The pair are so close on points and performance you couldn't put a Rizla paper between them. So why favour one over the other?

Horner says he didn't consult Marko, just Adrian Newey, as to who should have got the new wing. "I can't cut it in two," said Christian after the race. No, but if it only offers a characteristic change, and having seen how seething Mark was when told of your decision Christian, you might have considered not using it at all.

Rubens Barrichello and David Coulthard were both cast as number twos, but rarely did either show the kind of brilliance Mark has shown three times this year.  Still, they didn't like it but they kept their grievances in-house. Not Mark, and I admire that. By saying on the radio in response to Horner's congratulatory message "Not bad for a number two" he has taken his case public.

Some have said it was a petulant comment he may regret. Personally I'm all for drivers speaking their mind, and it should be no surprise Mark did so. He doesn't take any shit.

I greatly admire what Christian has done with RBR, but I believe he mishandled the immediate aftermath of Turkey and he made a naïve error on Saturday, thinking it wouldn't blow up into a big deal.

Personally, I love a good underdog story. That's why it was so great to see Jenson rebound from the verge of redundancy last year to claim the title. Should Webber take the championship in the wake these controversies, the podium champagne will taste all the sweeter.

"You judge a person's character by how they come back from adversity," said Mark yesterday. Quite how Red Bull's PR machine will bounce back from the adversity of a Webber win, it will be interesting to see.

British Grand Prix winner Mark Webber described his impressive victory as "an appointment with karma" after Red Bull Racing's management had once again shown favoritism towards team mate Sebastian Vettel. As he took the chequered flag, Webber radioed his boss, Christian Horner, saying "Not bad for a number two driver". It was a barb every bit as sharp and aggressive as the move he put on pole-sitter Seb through Turn 1.

Red Bull had developed a new front wing for Silverstone, and had manufactured only two. One of these was wrecked when Vettel hit a bump in practice and the wing detached. Horner made the controversial decision that, based on the championship standings - Vettel started the weekend with 12 points more than Webber - the remaining wing should be detached from the Australian's car and given to Vettel for qualifying and the race.

It comes five weeks after the pair collided in Turkey. Webber was immediately blamed by the team's management, before video replays proved it was Vettel that was at fault.

It is believed the new wing was worth around a tenth of a second. Vettel's qualifying time was 0.14 seconds faster than Webber's.

Horner described Mark's post-race comments as "throwaway" and said he'd make the same decision again, but team sources told me that Mark was seething on Saturday and vowed that he would not yield to Vettel at Turn 1. There were going to be fireworks.

On his way to the starting grid, Mark told the BBC "I want to do the best for the guys on MY car," underlining he feels the garage is divided. Having won the race, Webber requested one of his own crew accept the constructors' trophy on the podium. That request was refused by Horner. "That's not up to Mark", he said, and bestowed the honour to Head of Aerodynamics Peter Prodromou.

"I'm sure we'll have some decent chats tomorrow," said Webber, when the team goes back over the events of the last few days at their nearby Milton Keynes base. "Honestly, I wouldn't have signed a contract had I thought this was the way going forward".
He believes that, should a similar situation arise at the Hockenheimring in a fortnight, as points leader he will receive any preferential parts. Webber now sits on 128 points - seven more than his team mate. He has three wins this season to Vettel's two.

For the two leading drivers in Formula One and eight of the 12 teams, the British Grand Prix is their home race. Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button have been on a ten day media junket, which started with them paint balling against London's Fleet Street press - talk about the hunters and the hunted - and came to a head when an 11 year-old child from the Great Ormond Street Hospital asked the pair "Have you had a bet between yourselves as to which of of you will be world champion?" No, they hadn't and maybe they should, they agreed. The pair talked about conceding the keys to their favourite road cars, before young Carl Hillis piped up again: "Why don't you just flush the loser's head down the toilet?"

So far, the only bruises the McLaren duo show are down to that paint balling trip - five days on Lewis still winces when he sits down - but if they put one over the other this weekend in front of their adoring crowd, the tension is likely to build a la Red Bull Racing. Playground spats like head flushing are not unknown, even in this most sophisticated of sports.

Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel are both equally fancied for victory at Silverstone. Vettel took a peerless win here in 2009. The RB6 is custom made for the former RAF base's flat-out curves. It loves fast turns so much it wants to cover them in baby oil and rub up against them.

But the McLaren could well be similarly tuned this weekend, for it's getting a major aero upgrade that will include a 'blown exhaust' just like Red Bull's that will help suck it to the track.

Button has never been on the podium at Silverstone. "I've won the world championship, I've won in Monaco, and I'm desperate to get my hands on this trophy," he revealed at a press conference on Tuesday. "Lewis and I are both winners and we both want to win. We're going to fight it out."

It seems a bit odd to be celebrating Lotus' 500th grand prix when the team is only nine races old, but that's what we did in Valencia... and it felt right.

Lotus Racing (as it is known so as to differentiate itself from the original Team Lotus that Colin Chapman established back in 1954) have gone about their debut season in a respectably understated way. They worked miracles to get a reliable car designed and built in five months. Since then they've set achievable targets, and they've delivered. You can't ask for more than that.

Of course, being the best of the new teams is one thing when you're up against an outfit which was in financial crisis just weeks before Bahrain, and another whose car was designed on a Commodore 64. Okay, that's really mean. CFD may well be the way forward. But Lotus Racing was 1.4 seconds quicker than Virgin in Valencia qualifying.

No, it's one thing to blow Hispania and Virgin into the weeds, but it's quite another task to emulate the success of Team Lotus, a team that won 13 titles.

I asked Mike Gascoyne today if he truly believes he can one day take the fight to Ferrari and McLaren. His response: "Bring it on".

It won't happen over night, but Mike is building the blocks of a team that really could be a giant killer in the not too distant. After a recent shopping spree at Force India, he's fast assembled one of the most talented and experienced technical and aero teams in the pitlane. With the visionary Tony Fernandes keeping the coffers full, but also keeping a wisely tight reign so there's no wastage, this is a team with a real future as well as a glorious bloodline.

The name on the nose on the car is more than a nod to the past. The team is based in Norfolk, just 15 minutes from Group Lotus' base in Hethel. Several of the staff are ex-Team Lotus. And between 'Gazza' and Tony, you've got a combination of no-bullshit tech-spertise and marketing savvy that Chapman himself would have loved.

Fernandes was a Lotus fan as a kid who burnt a hole in his parents carpet playing with a model Type-49. Taking on the Lotus name made commercial sense and fulfilled a school boy dream. But essentially, Fernandes wanted to do his own thing. He could have bought Toyota and had an easier winter. But it just didn't appeal.

"I think life is about creating something of your own, and buying an existing team is not your own," he explained to me aboard his rented yacht in Monaco some weeks back. "I mean, I have bought an existing airline, but that was two planes and it was losing tonnes of money, which I was able to turn around. An existing team comes with 500 people, who already have their way of doing things. That wasn't something that really appealed to me. Everything that I do with my partners is to create something we can be proud of, and it's much easier to do that from the beginning. My talent is for bringing the right people together and giving them a working environment in which they can thrive. That's much harder to do with an existing team. That would be a battle."

He likes to do things his own way, does Tony. Old man Chapman would have approved.

"I'm prepared for the down days, and there will be some, but we're moving in the right direction and faster than I had dared to dream," says Tony.

"Not only does the car perform well, and the recent upgrades have met expectations, but the drivers are great, the whole team looks good. We deserve to be here, and we'll be here a long time yet."

Today wasn't the first time Mark Webber has gone for an unscheduled flight. Let's look back to 1999 - before Mark made his F1 debut - when he drove for Mercedes-Benz at Le Mans and ended up sitting in a tree. Twice.

The nine drivers that were caught exceeding the safety car-in lap time have been punished with five second penalties. They are: Button, Barrichello, Hulkenberg, Kubica, Petrov, Sutil, Liuzzi, Buemi and de la Rosa.

The penalties mean Fernando Alonso is elevated from ninth to eighth, as he overtakes Buemi, and Nico Rosberg gets the final point from de la Rosa, 10th in the race.

In addition, Timo Glock has had 20 seconds added to his time for ignoring the blue flags.

All other positions remain unchanged.

Mark Webber's huge crash at the European Grand Prix proved how far F1 has come in terms of safety. Here are another five near misses

1.    2007 CANADIAN GRAND PRIX
Driving for BMW Sauber, Robert Kubica clipped the rear of Jarno Trulli's Toyota on lap 27, was thrown across the grass and slammed powerlessly into a wall at 180mph. He then bounced back across the track, the wrecked tub rolling over and over, until he scraped down the side of a crash barrier. Amazingly, his only injuries were a slight concussion and a twisted ankle. The following day he drove home from the hospital.



2.    1998 BELGIAN GRAND PRIX
The biggest pile up in F1 history was caused when David Coulthard lost his McLaren in slippery conditions, and thwacked into the pitwall, setting off a bomb of shattered carbon fibre and smoke. Thirteen cars were involved, and four cars were so badly totaled they couldn't take the restart.


3.    1996 AUSTRALIAN GRAND PRIX
Martin Brundle's new Jordan lasted just a few corners when he hit the back of another car and, like Webber on Sunday, went airborne. As it rolled across the gravel trap the car broke in two. "I felt liquid running down my face, and I could smell oil," he tells Metro. "Turned out it was just my energy drink, but I got out quick. When I saw the red flags I thought 'that's a bit of luck', and ran back to the pits for the spare car."


4.    1989 SAN MARINO GRAND PRIX
Most drivers have pictures in their house of them winning. Gerhard Berger has photos of him crashing, and his favourite is this one. He hit the Tamburello corner with such force his Ferrari burst into flames. A marshall pulled him out of the blaze after 16 painful seconds. He suffered only minor burns. One newspaper headline cried 'You Lucky Berger'.


5.    1985 AUSTRIAN GRAND PRIX
Andrea de Cesaris made 208 grand prix starts, and in that time earned the nickname 'de Crasheris'. His most notable smash came at the A1 Ring. He flew off the track after misjudging a left-hander, rolled across a grassy slope and flipped end-over-end five times. Afterwards, team boss Guy Ligier declared: "I can no longer afford the services of this young man."

The British contingent are moping about the paddock at the moment after that 4-1 defeat in South Africa, while the Germans at Mercedes are celebrating. And they had something else to cheer about this afternoon.

Sebastian Vettel got his championship campaign back on track with an authoritative victory in Valencia, though it was the airborne exit of his team mate, Mark Webber, that provided the most thrilling moment of the race.

Starting second, Webber made a poor start and an early pitstop, meaning he was attacking slower cars at the back of the field as he tried to salvage points. Bearing down on the Lotus of Heikki Kovalainen, the Australian braked much too late on the fast approach to Turn 12. His Red Bull plowed into the back of the Lotus and somersaulted in the air, crashing down on its nose and burying itself into the tyre wall at horrendous speed. In a stunning tribute to the safety of Formula One, Webber walked away unscathed.

Click here to watch the video (before Bernie takes it down):



Meanwhile, Vettel had held onto his lead at the start, having been challenged by Lewis Hamilton through Turn 2. The pair tagged wheels, resulting in a slightly broken front wing for the McLaren.

Hamilton changed his wing on Lap 15 when the safety car came out for Webber, but was later penalized with a drive-thru for passing the safety car as it exited the pitlane. His old foe Fernando Alonso, who was behind him at the time, snitched to his Ferrari team over the radio and Hamilton was forced to take the penalty 12 laps later. By that time, he'd built a big enough gap over Sauber's hard-charging Kamui Kobayashi to return to the track still in second.

Alonso was absolutely furious after the race, saying the result had been "manipulated", because he'd respected the rules and Hamilton hadn't. "Hamilton overtook the safety car, something that I had never seen. We were a metre off each other, and he finished second and I finished ninth.

"This race was to finish second. Then with the safety car I would have finished where I finished in ninth, and Hamilton in eighth. But here, when you do the normal thing, which is respecting the rules, you finish ninth, and the one who doesn't respect them finishes second."

Jenson Button was stuck behind the Sauber until Kobayashi made his mandatory tyre change on lap 54 - an amazing distance on a single set of boots. That allowed Button three laps to "go and have fun and see what the car could do", and set the fastest lap of the race.

Kobayashi rejoined in ninth but on fresh rubber was able to attack, picking of Alonso and finally Sebastien Buemi for seventh at the final corner.

There's an ongoing investigation into whether nine cars sped under safety car conditions. Button, Rubens Barrichello, Nico Hulkenberg, Robert Kubica, Vitaly Petrov, Adrian Sutil, Tonio Liuzzi, Buemi and Pedro de la Rosa all set a laptime faster than the allowed time when the safety car first pulled onto the track. It may result in retrospective time penalties, or possible even grid demotions at the next race at Silverstone.

Hamilton goes to his home grand prix at the top of the championship table, followed by countryman and McLaren team mate Button.

Formula One says 'Ola' to Spain for the second time this season, pitching up at the port-side Valencia Street Circuit. And there's a reason this country gets two races - the popularity of Fernando Alonso.

For the past two years in which the race has been run, Alonso raced a Renault that was unable to challenge for victory. But now he's at Ferrari, the crowd expects to see him on the top step. His second place in Barcelona has whetted their appetite and now they're ready for the main course.

With the emphasis on mechanical rather than aerodynamic grip, last fortnight's Canadian GP suited the bulky Ferrari and the characteristics in Valencia are similar. Plus, the Scuderia has been studying Red Bull Racing's exhaust system and is bringing a major upgrade.

This, combined with Alonso's fevered determination in front of his home crowd, should produce a solid result, but beating Red Bull and McLaren won't be easy.

Lewis Hamilton has taken two wins on the trot now, and Canada was one of the most mature drives of his career so far. He has the benefit of momentum behind him, and McLaren's rate of development is shockingly impressive. Interestingly, Ferrari has just poached McLaren's chief mechanic Pat Fry, in a bit to jump start their own R&D.

Red Bull could have more headaches this weekend, as the team assess whether they need to change Sebastian Vettel's gearbox. If they do, he will face a five-place grid penalty just as Mark Webber did in Canada. Had that not happened, Mark might have been in contention for the win. There are a lot of 'what ifs' surrounding Red Bull this year, but the simple fact is they have thrown away at least three odds-on victories and many other points to boot. Fantastic news for McLaren and Ferrari.

With a new rear end and an on-fire Alonso, Valencia is Ferrari's chance to turn their season around.