Mercedes say they did not intervene in the fight between their drivers for fourth place in the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix because they did not believe it would improve their result.
George Russell was heard urging the team not to impose orders on its cars when Lewis Hamilton closed within striking range of him following the Safety Car period in last Sunday’s race. Hamilton was on a softer set of tyres at the time.
Mercedes did not tell Russell to let his team mate past and Hamilton did not request a change of positions. After several laps of pursuing his team mate closely, Hamilton dropped back, and eventually finished 5.199 seconds behind him.
Mike Elliott, the team’s technical director, said Mercedes reasoned Hamilton would only temporarily be quicker than Russell and so decided not to swap the running order.
“First of all you’ve got to bear in mind that the Safety Car was pretty early so it was going to be a very long final stint,” he explained in a video released by the team. “Although Lewis came out on the faster tyre theoretically, the medium, by the end of the stint the hard tyre was going to be a much quicker tyre.
“So although Lewis could put pressure on George initially he wasn’t going to be able to do that at the end of the stint and so there probably wasn’t a clear [picture of] which tyre is faster or slower if you look at the full stint length.”
Elliott said the team prefer to avoid issuing orders when possible. “We’ve always let our drivers race. That’s just the way we have operated as a team and we didn’t think we were going to be in a position where favouring one driver over the other would get us in a better position in the race. So we just let them race.”
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Hamilton and Russell’s radio messages from laps 28-36
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