Mercedes back down over Lewis
Wolff: Team orders were wrong
Mercedes chiefs have not only backed down on their threat to sack Lewis Hamilton for refusing to obey team orders — they admit they were wrong to give those orders in the first place.
Team boss Toto Wolff announced last night that Hamilton will face no action over the controversial way he tried to steal the world drivers’ title from team-mate Nico rosberg in the season-closing Abu dhabi Grand Prix.
Hamilton, who could have landed his third championship in a row if he had won the race and rosberg finished outside the top three, defied orders by deliberately slowing down at the front of the field in the hope that drivers from other teams might catch rosberg in the traffic he created.
But Wolff chose to draw a line under the row as he concentrates on searching for a replacement for rosberg, who stunned the team by announcing his retirement days after the defining race.
‘In the heat of the moment, sometimes when you make decisions, you get them wrong,’ Wolff told sky sports.
‘In our mind, the way we think, this race was giving us the same number of points as other races and we try to win that one — not considering that there was much more at stake for the drivers.
‘How the race panned out, we should have communicated differently and in hindsight let them race in the way they deemed to be appropriate.’
At the time an angry Wolff described the actions of his lead driver as ‘anarchy’ and warned: ‘Undermining a structure in public means you are putting yourself before the team.’
But his U-turn now shows how much the team needs to look after their star driver as they restructure following rosberg’s exit.
The difficulty of finding the right replacement was underlined by the Mercedes team themselves putting a spoof job advert into Autosport magazine asking for applicants for the post. Any potential candidate would have a ‘proven track record in skills including steering, braking and, in particular, accelerating’.
They jokingly suggested that possession of an FIA super Licence would merely be an ‘advantage’. Unfortunately, there did not seem to be a phone number, recruiter or email address for any candidates to contact. That did not deter 1990s F1 driver Taki Inoue from putting together a cV on Twitter.