Mercedes has revealed that using team orders against George Russell to protect the side’s Formula 1 Belgian Grand Prix would’ve been considered with one more lap.
Russell executed an unexpected one-stop race to head home team-mate Lewis Hamilton at Spa-Francorchamps until an underweight car saw him end up disqualified.
Hamilton, who started third, passed Sergio Perez at the start and then polesitter Charles Leclerc on the third lap to be in a position to control proceedings throughout.
However, the Briton ended up behind his compatriot when Russell, who was stuck in fifth, decided with the team to gamble on making one less pit stop than his rivals.
Despite managing to reel in his team-mate with several laps to go, Hamilton was unable to pass Russell as turbulence was making overtaking harder than anticipated.
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has explained that the team wanted to avoid making Russell move aside, but Oscar Piastri’s threat could have necessitated an intervention.
Asked whether there was a temptation to impose a team order on Russell to protect Hamilton against a hard-charging Piastri, Wolff replied: “Not with team orders but probably if we had one more lap, that could have been a consideration because it would have protected P1, and George would have finished P3. But I’m happy that we didn’t have to make this call.”
Hamilton expressed dissatisfaction with the strategic calls that Mercedes chose as he indicated that his rubber was in a good enough condition to replicate Russell.
But with track position proving critical, Wolff has divulged the marque wanted to cover Leclerc and Piastri’s stops to ensure Hamilton didn’t end up behind other cars.
“As a driver, you don’t have the full picture because he said his tyres are good. But at that stage, nobody had a one-stop on the radar,” he elaborated.
“We had to cover the cars behind, I think it was Piastri and Leclerc. And you can see that everybody else went on the two-stop logically.
“It just wasn’t on the radar. So, what we did with Lewis was absolutely the right thing to do. But in the end, George made them survive.
“It couldn’t have been anticipated because if it would have been, any of the other top teams would have done it.”
In the end, Russell’s exclusion, which has been attributed to the increased wear on a one-stop, promoted Hamilton to the win that he was certain his run had deserved.
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