Mercedes admit to team orders mistake

Toto Wolff says Mercedes were wrong to impose team orders on Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg during the final F1 race of the season.

Hamilton ignored team instructions during the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in his bid to overhaul team-mate Nico Rosberg at the top of the drivers' championship.

Mercedes had already secured the constructors' championship ahead of the season finale at the Yas Marina Circuit, and head of motorsport Wolff now accepts he should have let the drivers race normally.

"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."

In a bid to secure a fourth world crown, Hamilton, 31, slowed down the entire field from the front so that Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull's Max Verstappen, who were both on different tyre strategies, would bunch behind Rosberg and force him into a mistake.

However, the German held on to second place behind Hamilton to claim his maiden F1 drivers' title.

Hamilton ignored pit lane orders to change his tactics during the race, and Wolff had harsh words for the Briton in the immediate aftermath of the race.

"Undermining a structure in public means you are putting yourself before the team. It is very simple. Anarchy does not work in any team and in any company," he said.

Photo (Getty Images/Tom Dulat)

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