[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by gblake

The tournament arithmetic might be as clear as a bell in those extreme circumstances; but it is the psychology of the observers that is even more important. To me this (instead of blanket statements that anyone-who-does-it-is-evil) is the better and more educational answer.

You've created a straw-man argument based on assuming an unlikely edge case, and then used that to scold quite a number of intelligent, thoughtful contributors. Since the OP did not include the approval of his alliance partners in his hypothetical, that is how the majority of people here responded.

Let me ask you a simple question -- if you were a student driver on team XYZ and your alliance partner DEF told you that they were not going to score during the match in order improve their chances in Eliminations, how would you feel? Would it be wrong?

Since I am not uncomfortable making value judgements, I would say that the correct answer is "yes, it is wrong."