Red Bull teams played ’games’ in Abu Dhabi - Costa

Ferrari was the victim of "team games" during the recent 2010 championship decider in Abu Dhabi.

That is the claim of the Italian team’s technical director Aldo Costa, who suspects Red Bull’s two teams Red Bull Racing and Toro Rosso cooperated during the race to influence Ferrari’s race strategy for Fernando Alonso.

Ferrari has admitted it was wrong to pit Alonso early in Abu Dhabi to ’cover’ Red Bull’s Mark Webber, who then sat behind Toro Rosso’s Jaime Alguersuari for a time before passing the young Spaniard.

Costa was asked by La Repubblica newspaper in Italy if Ferrari’s strategists took too much notice of the Red Bull-sponsored ’overtaking’.

"We were crucified by team games; what we saw in Abu Dhabi was team games," he said, perhaps suggesting that Ferrari was duped into thinking Alonso might also be able to make progress through the field.

"Anyway, we made some impulsive assessments and got it wrong," admitted Costa.

Not surprisingly, Adrian Newey has a different view of the Webber-Alguersuari antics, believing that the Toro Rosso actually held up the Australian rather than let him pass.

"It is only because Mark got held up that they (Ferrari) were able to go for the cover, so actually Toro Rosso did us a real favour - rather unwittingly I suspect," said the Red Bull technical chief.