But what they got was one of a team not being able to control their drivers & not having a cohesive explanation afterwards. Lauda initially saying they needed to see data from Hamilton's car to see if anything was wrong an why he was driving slowly, Wolff saying he understood all sides of the story but they can't have anarchy, Rosberg Saying he had no problem with it in the end Paddy Lowe saying something different & Hamilton being pis*sed off because he was given orders in a race that they were told Merc wouldn't interfere with.
That looks totally chaotic to me & even worse when it is blatantly obvious that the situation that arose, after Hamilton took pole, was odds on favourite to happen.
As it stand they can out engineer & out plan themselves but they can't see the obvious about to hit them in face.

If they want an example of German efficiency, this was not it.
The whole season of dominance, wrapping up every major position in the championships & having a car that is vastly superior to all the others is what advertises the German efficiency.
Stating before the race that they were hands off and letting the two battle it out, shows planning & forethought. Allowing the drivers to race however is needed (without crashing in to each other, which is always the golden rule) shows that they are a team that understands competition & a ruthless desire to win & achieve the very best.

Hamilton has now pulled out of a tyre test due to being unwell.

I do hope it is nothing serious there have been reports of him hanging around with Paris Hilton.

Without the controversy nothing would have been made of the 1-2. There is only a big fuss being made over this unimportant result in an attempt to make it seem like that was the reason Mercedes ordered Lewis to give the title to Nico.
The order was never about the 1-2 either, it was about ensuring Nico won the championship.

The few people that care are not going to remember the 1-2 victory in a few months time, but the interference to gift the championship to Nico will be remembered for years.

It's a massive own goal for Mercedes, they tarnished the result with corrupt interference. Instead of advising Nico that he would have to speed up to protect the championship, they did his work for him.

The only time a team should employ team orders in a championship crucial race is if it is when only one driver has the chance to win. When both drivers are in contention for the championship then team orders should never be used, and allow the drivers so battle it out on track as it should be rather than the battle being won on the prat perch.

So, engaging in tactics is not 'proper racing'?
Of course Lewis had no interest in Nico, he was his title contender. He would be thinking about his own title chances just like every other racer would be, not giving his title rival an easy ride to the championship.

Perhaps Rosberg should have engaged in 'proper racing' and actually put his foot down and passed Lewis, instead of just trailing round 1 sec behind him doing the bare minimum
It really is funny seeing people criticising Lewis for supposedly not racing when Nico was doing far less.

Dont get the criticism for Lewis frankly. He was winning the race, the only way he was going to win the championship was to employ other tactics. Thats sport. Mercedes had already won both titles irrespective so their order to speed up was pathetic. If Lewis didnt try something different there was no point in him even starting the race.

It would have been foolish madness for Rosberg to try and pass hamilton. The legitimate tactics deployed would have had him out of the race.

Passing Crash Verstappen was much safer for Rosberg than going anywhere near along side his team mate.

I too don't get it. I read on sky sports under trending on sky sports.com would merc sack him? I can't imagine anyone is stupid enough to think that's ever gonna happen so not really sure why that question is even been asked. Same for would they drop him, same answer. Come the start of the new season all this will be long forgotten and I can't wait plus I get to see it in UHD.

Yeah, but it will be the same sh!tty FOM production, but I suppose the shots of the trackside advertising and the celebs using complementary tickets will look a bit better.

Just thought I would highlight the important parts about F1 for you.

Nothing wrong with a driver wanting to win the championship, but without those highlighted parts, they wouldn't be in the position to even contemplate the championship.

Yeah, but they weren't for the benefit of the team were they! Nothing that happened on Sunday was for the benefit of the team, because it wasn't set to gain from it. It just lost credibility as a result of their meddling.

It was designed to benefit one driver at the expense of the other, when they should have both been left to battle it out on the track between themselves.

Formula One is both a team and driver championship, the team championship was already won and therefore not important anymore, unlike the driver championship.
Some people are acting as if F1 is primarily a team championship, even though the driver championship is the one that everyone talks about not the team.

Agreed. If Merc could have lost the WCC on Sunday to Vettel/Ferrari then the call to speed up to Hamilton can be legitimised. Beyind that they have forgotten that it is a Team & Driver sport.

If Hamilton backing up Rosberg had cause a serious incident how is it going to look for Mercedes?

Who knows what tactics hamilton might have deployed he could be judge to have moved in the braking zone during a manoeuvre which cause Max or Vettel to hit Rosberg and knock him out the race.

Hamilton could be WDC but widely condemned. He could top the points but been DQed from the WDC. Mercedes would be tarnished and look like idiots because they can't control their drivers.

So there are many reasons why it is in the best interest of Mercedes for the racing to be pure and not have one car being a rolling road block.

I can understand why Hamiton did what he did, but ignoring team orders is stupid and ungrateful, as they pay his wages (and he who pays the piper calls the tune) and he was only in a position of winning the title because of driving for the best current team, in any other team he wouldn't have been close as F1 these days is more about the car than driving skill.

If Mercedes weren't wanting to try and win (by wanting Lewis to speed up) there was no point in them starting the race

How many times dies this need explaining before it finally sinks in. The benefit to the team is to get a win, and preferably a 1-2.

I'm surprised you're not advocating that they shouldn't have even bothered going to Abu Dhabi. They'd already secured the manufacturer's title, after all, so why even bother?

Hamilton did what he had to do in his in an attempt to win the championship. Do you think Rosberg would have done any different had the roles been reversed. They were two drivers going for the championship and the team should of let them get on with it. Alain Prost came out and backed Hamilton. I'm sure that any driver in the same position would of done the same thing.

Rather than allow one driver to use his experience, race craft and skill to try to ramp up the excitement of the drivers title, I reckon they ought to do something really simple like introduce double points for the final race.
Oh hang on....

Who was it for then? just because it seems irrelevant to you, the position of 1 & 2 is not irrelevant to Mercedes despite having secured the WCC...not really difficult to understand....otherwise why really bother, as a team they didn't need too and just field an uncompetitive car, after all nothing was of benefit to the team.

..because looking like they don't care is such good advertising for the brand.
The benefit to the team was having 2 drivers who are the only people in contention to win the WDC battling it out at the front of the grid on a world stage to decide which one has been the best driver in what has already been proven to be the best car.
Unfortunately the management failed to manage and made the team look a bit daft with their instructions.
Everyone watching knew exactly what was going to happen & they'd known it since the chequered flag fell in Brazil 2 weeks earlier, yet somehow Merc hadn't factored the scenario in to the race weekend and failed to assess what they actually needed to do, which was let the driver take control of their own race.

But the only time that Mercedes got involved with the race between their two drivers was when it looked like the driving of one if them might reduce Mercedes's chance of another 1-2, or even a 1. They were not bothered which of their drivers took the driver's crown, but they were bothered whether or not a Mercedes won the Abu Dhabi GP.

No ones is disputing why they did what they did, what we're saying it that they ballsed up by doing it. No one outside of Merc really cares abou the number of 1-2s in a season, it's a stat that's a stat just because it can a stat. In 3 years time 99% of the viewing public won't remember how many 1-2s they got this year or any year. The viewing public will remember an enthralling end of season race that Merc' tried to scupper for essentially nothing.
Merc' didn't gain anything by doing it apart from bad publicity, a pi*ssed off driver & an employment issue that never needed to happen.
The actions of Hamilton during the race kept the season alive right to the end. kept the cameras on the Mercedes cars & brand. Mercedes would have come out of this looking far better if they had not made the team orders decision.

I think there is only a small segment of the viewing public which think anything like that happened.

Also many would take the view that a driver caused an issue with their employer.

Looking at the headlines none of the negative comments are about mercedes.

BIB Rubbish!
A lot of the headlines are about an annoying, whinny Hamilton blaming the team/reliability rather than being gracious in defeat, A lot are saying he did the right thing in the race & some are saying his employment is in threat (makes a good story!) https://news.google.com/news/story?n...5GD0UQqgIIKTAA
So none of the stories are putting Mercedes in a bad light or asking questions about why they made the strange decisions??? not exactly glowing publicity.
https://news.google.com/news/story?n...dBAVwQqgIIKTAA

So if no one disputes why they did it, then they didn't balls it up.

Nothing wrong with Mercedes saying what they did, their interest was getting both cars on the podium in 1st & 2nd place, 3rd place may even have been acceptable...but what wouldn't have been acceptable was if either or both cars had been in a collision and that was a possible scenario at the time with the pack been backed up....I would expect all teams to make the same call in the same scenario.

We know why they did it but what they did was wrong in a lot of people's opinion.
Everyone knew what Hamilton was going to do in the race if he was out front. Fans, commentators, other teams & team bosses all knew, there is no way that Merc didn't. By making the call they were either being plain stupid, post their flag for Rosberg to win the WDC or deliberately trying to make Hamilton look bad knowing he would't back down. Either way their interviews after the race were not cohesive with the main players having different viewpoints of what happened and why it happened & what they might do about it.
Their best option for the race was to do nothing and tell the drivers to sort it out amongst themselves, instead they have a sh*tstorm or bad PR with news articles constantly running about what punishment LH will get for trying to win the WDC & whether Merc were right/wrong for their orders.