Mercedes have explained why team orders weren't imposed during Lewis Hamilton and George Russell's mid-race battle at the SaudiArabianGP F1
"First of all you’ve got to bear in mind that the Safety Car was pretty early so it was going to be a very long final stint,” Elliott said.
“Although Lewis came out on the faster tyre theoretically the Medium, by the end of the stint the Hard tyre was going to be a much quicker tyre. “So, although Lewis could put pressure on George initially he wasn’t going to be able to do that at the end of the stint and so there probably wasn’t a clear which tyre is faster or slower if you look at the full stint length.”Elliott underlined that Mercedes' position on allowing their drivers to race each other freely remains unchanged.
“We've always let our drivers race, that's just the way we have operated as a team and we didn’t think we were going to be in a position where favouring one driver over the other would get us in a better position in the race,” he added. “So, we just let them race."
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