He ignored orders from team members which ran contrary to the pre-agreed team policy of being allowed to race. It was those team members who were out of order.

The two situations are not comparable though. At the point of Multi-21 the drivers championships were still very much open and the WCC was no where near decided.
Red Bull were fully justified at that point to use team orders. They order was put in place to ensure a 1-2 finish to gain maximum points in the WCC. The team wanted the drivers to back off, not push the engines & not risk taking each other out of the race.
The 43 points that the team would take from this race was the prime concern that day as it should have been. They had everything to fight for.

Merc had NOTHING to fight for. everything was wrapped up, done & dusted, finished, concluded. They had nothing to gain at all.
If they had used the comms during the race and said "guys, this is all about you now, you need to race against each other" they would have walked away from the race with a massive amount of respect, fantastic publicity for the brand & a general feel good factor.
As it stands they have left the last race with a PR nightmare, a lot of negative publicity, discord from the one of the drivers & probably the mechanics on his side of the garage & am employment decision to make on how to deal with a totally avoidable but obvious breach of team orders.

They had 1 & 2, the WCC was done & dusted.
What have they gained from making the call other than bad publicity?

Seriously, what did Merc have to gain by making that order? 1 & 2 in the WDC was guaranteed, the WCC was already sewn up. They gained nothing by making the call to Hamilton except bad press and a pi*sed off driver.

What interests did they have? The history books & trophy don't have "F1 WCC (by margin of x points and y 1/2 finishes" stamped or printed on them.
The advertising they use having won the WCC doesn't have footnotes about points and driver placings on it, customer goodwill doesn't get better because they have x number of 1/2 finishes in a season.
If the race had been a decider in the result of the WCC then Hamilton should have the book thrown at him by Merc. If it was the decider in whether or not Rosberg won the WDC or Vettell (with Hamilton not being in contention) and Hamilton did the same thing he should have the book thrown at him.
Merc have won nothing by making the order & only created themselves issues & problems.

He is very good at being a spoilt git!
His attitude after the race was appalling & his dismissive opinions on why he lost, allowing Rosberg to win should have been kept to himself until a later date.

Isn't that just Verstappen!

If a similar situation occurs next season or in the future, once the WCC is won & the WDC guaranteed to only drivers from Merc, I'd imagine the team orders would cease if they have a direct effect on the race between the two team mates. It's in everyone's best interest to let the drivers race properly once the WCC is sorted. Yeah there'll be the golden rule of not taking each other off track but that could well be it.

They did, but it was looking like they wouldn't with LH backing the pack up, LH would have been fine & dandy and secured 1st, but the 2nd Mercedes certainly wasn't guaranteed a 2nd place according to the data...the team had no choice but to make the call, due to what the data was telling them.

In the end it all worked out right, but the team had to make the call.

Just for interest the teams with the most 1-2 finishes are Ferrari with 81 from 929 starts, McLaren with 47 from 810 starts, Mercedes with 36 from 146 starts and Williams with 33 from 657 starts. Mercedes most 1-2 finishes in a season, a record 12, was achieved in 2015.

So the result of the final 2016 GP made no difference to those standings or that Mercedes won the WCC or that one of it's drivers won the WDC. It could however have made a difference to which driver won the WDC which is why the team should not have interferred.

I'm talking about 1st/2nd in the WDC. The WCC was done & dusted, nothing more for the team to win/gain regardless of the finishing positions of Ham/Ros.
Having the most 1-2 finishes means nothing. Having a team that lets their drivers properly race when there is nothing for the team to race for would give them so much good publicity (especially compared to the issues they've created for themselves now) it should be a no-brainer.

It obviously does to Mercedes, and really if you are a team in F1 it should matter, no matter which team is in the paddock I would expect them all to have made the same call, likewise you would also expect all the drivers to have made the same call as Lewis.

It could, but the WDC is of no interest to the team...only the drivers & fans. As long as the team cars came home 1 & 2 is what mattered to them, so every right to interfere if the potential was that would not happen.

That is patently rubbish.


Christian Horner said Mercedes were naive and Hamilton had broken no rules and was fair in what he did and saw no reason to interfere.

Put it this way, if Brawn were still in charge of Mercedes, or if it had been Red Bull in that position, the drivers would have been allowed to race each other free from team interference. Looking further down the field Force India went into the race still defending 4th in the CC against Williams. They had much more to lose by letting their drivers race each other but that's precisely what they did.

If Mercedes were so worried about their precious 1-2 finish then why, towards the end, were they reminding Rosberg that he only needed third to win the DC? I suspect the truth is Mercedes decided before the weekend that Rosberg winning the title was their prefered outcome and did everything they could to ensure that. A 'safe' final race with a predetermined result was more important to Mercedes than an exciting climax to the season gving F1 a bit of a boost after another rather dull year. Thankfully not everyone got the memo, or at least took notice.

Spot on.

But they were not racing each other, Lewis was clearly backing the pack up, so other teams could race Rosberg...would Christian Horner, Brawn any other team be happy that they could lose position by one of their drivers bringing other teams into play...I doubt it despite what they might say after the event.

They are comparable, the team issued an order. You should obey. The scenario is different, but thats not got anything to do with it. You may want it to, but it doesnt.

Its in the drivers (mercs at least) contract (according to sky tv), that the drivers have a clause in their contracts that team orders must be obeyed.

Hamilton blatantly disobeyed team orders. No different from Vettel disobeying team orders.

Also, by backing up into Nico he was increasing the chance of something going wrong, and Mercedes colliding with each other and/or vettel.

It wouldn't have been very good publicity if they had taken each other out.

They were reninding him that 3rd place was OK so that he wouldn't have a rush of blood to the head and defend at all costs, at the risk of a crash.

Points at the end of the season means more prize money and less prize money to the opposition. Not much in this particular case, however.

Plus there's the record books.

Would have been great publicity!
Everyone talking about how dominant Mercedes have been this season that they were able to their drivers battle it out in the final race to decide the drivers championship.
A team willing to let their drivers properly race to conclude a season of Mercedes prowess.
A team that can win the WDC, the WCC & get 2nd in the WDC even though they have lost 86 points through inter-team rivalry.

What do they have now. A staffing issue whereby they might have to sanction the best driver in their team, a split public perception where some think they should have butted out of the race totally, some now convinced that there was an agenda against Hamilton & many convinced they don't know how to deal with their drivers properly.

They did...but Lewis wasn't properly racing he was.slowing down and he certainly had no interest in racing his teammate, he wanted others to race Rosberg.

What they would have had was an image that Mercedes couldn't organise a party with alcoholic drinks in a place that makes alcoholic drinks.

The image that Mercedes wants in a state such as Abu Dhabi (or anywhere for that matter) is one of flawless German efficiency, able to out engineer and out plan all competition.

They also want that image on the front page of local newspapers and the news headlines, as Mercedes take an emphatic 1-2 victory. They do not want to see pictures showing bits of Mercedes coloured carbon fibre being sprayed around because it's drivers are the weak link in the team.