Mercedes Formula One drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg will remain free to race each other for the world championship after their costly last lap collision in Austria, the team said on Thursday.
Mercedes Formula One drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg will remain free to race each other for the world championship after their costly last lap collision in Austria, the team said on Thursday.
However the ‘rules of engagement’ have been strengthened to include “greater deterrents to contact between our cars,” the team added in a statement at the British Grand Prix, without giving details.
So-called team orders, with the drivers told to hold station at a certain point of the race, could be imposed in future “as a solution of last resort” if the drivers do not honour the agreement.
The defending three-time world champion and his Mercedes team-mate collided on the final lap of last Sunday’s Austrian Grand Prix, won by Hami-lton, after which team chief Toto Wolff threatened team action.
Earlier, Wolff described his drivers as “brainless” and said he and Mercedes were prepared to introduce team orders if necessary. “It is on the table now,” he said.
He may need to do the same to control other parts of his team after non-executive chairman Niki Lauda was widely quoted on Tuesday saying that Hamilton had “destroyed” his room in the Mercedes offices at the European Grand Prix in Baku and had lied about the state of his relationship with Rosberg in a newspaper interview.
Twenty-four hours later, in a statement issued by the team on his behalf, Lauda was apparently back-tracking from those statements.
