Ferrari’s apparent coded message to Felipe Massa at Hockenheim has re-opened the debate about team orders in the sport, with several team bosses having suggested the incident has done fresh damage to F1’s image.

Article 39.1 which profits team orders that interfere with the race result was inserted into the sporting regulations by the FIA in 2002 following that year’s Austrian Grand Prix when Ferrari ordered Rubens Barrichello to make way for Michael Schumacher to win the race.

Ferrari looks set to appear before the governing body’s World Motor Sport Council but Ecclestone - who sits on the WMSC - when asked if, as some pundits have suggested, the regulation should be written out of the rulebook, said it was his opinion that teams should be able to do as they like.

"I don't know, we'll have to see. It's something that needs to be discussed," he was quoted as saying by the Press Association.

"Nobody should interfere as to how they run their team.

"But of course if they do something that's dangerous then obviously they're going to be in trouble, otherwise get on with it."

Former McLaren and Red Bull driver turned pundit David Coulthard has been one leading F1 figure to call on the team orders rules to be scrapped, and Ecclestone admitted given that the image of ‘a team’ is a strong one in F1 then it should be the prerogative of the individual squad how it executes its race strategy.

"I must confess I would agree with anyone who thinks that," said Ecclestone.

"We make people call it a team, we say it's got be a team.

"All the cars have to be exactly the same, the drivers wear the same overalls, so everybody has to look like a team - a team of people that are racing.

The Italian squad was engulfed in a team orders controversy after finishing 1-2 in Sunday’s race after Felipe Massa let team-mate Fernando Alonso through to win the race with 18 laps remaining.

Ferrari denied afterwards that it had given Massa any instruction to cede the position, saying that it had simply told him that his team-mate was faster and that the Brazilian took the decision to move aside in the interests of the team.

Nevertheless the radio message was widely interpreted as a coded team order and race stewards later judged that it had broken Article 39.1 of the sporting regulations forbidding team orders that interfere with the race result � while also referring the case to the FIA’s WMSC for further consideration.

On Sunday evening Ferrari confirmed that, in the interests of the sport, it would not be contesting the fine but added that it had faith that the FIA would assess the case in the right manner.

“As for the Stewards’ decision, given after the race, in the interests of the sport, we have decided not to go through a procedure of appealing against it, confident that the World Council will know how to evaluate the overall facts correctly,” team principal Stefano Domenicali said in a statement.

After Sunday’s race Domenicali, both drivers, Massa’s race engineer Rob Smedley and Ferrari team manager Massimo Rivola were all summoned to see the race stewards to explain the situation.

Later Domenicali was asked if he would have done anything differently during the course of the race, to which he replied: “Honestly, a way to handle it better? I don't think so.

“I think that the situation started really from the fact that we wanted to make sure that we shouldn’t have any difficult situation between our drivers.

“This is what we don’t want because we want to have the team’s best interests [put first].”