In the late 1990s, incidents of team orders began to be reported more prominently by the media, and public reaction to the more blatant examples became extremely negative. At the 1997 European Grand Prix, Jacques Villeneuve, already with the title in the bag (after the controversial collision with Schumacher, which Villeneuve's Williams survived), was asked by his engineer via radio to let the McLaren cars pass as "They've been very helpful", while at the 1998 Australian Grand Prix, the McLaren drivers David Coulthard and Mika Häkkinen caused a stir by switching position at the end of the race in order to respect a previous agreement.