Clearly not wishing to pour further gasoline on the fire, Mercedes technical boss Paddy Lowe has said he understands why Lewis Hamilton chose to ignore team orders yesterday.

Though leading the race, Hamilton was aware that his only hope of winning the title was for teammate Nico Rosberg not to finish on the podium. Therefore, following Christian Horner's advice, he deliberately slowed his pace ensuring that Rosberg was backed up in to the clutches of the drivers behind including Max Verstappen and Sebastian Vettel.

What began as gentle advice from his engineer Pete Bonnington soon developed into firm instructions, eventually Paddy Lowe himself ordering Hamilton to up his pace.

As Hamilton continued to back-off, lapping up to 9s off his qualifying time, the team feared that not only would Rosberg be passed but the hard charging Vettel would overtake the world champion also.

Despite the Briton's refusal to comply with team orders however, Lowe is sympathetic to why he adopted such tactics.

"This is what makes F1 exciting in a way," he said, "we are constructed to have inevitable conflicts between what a team wants and what two individual drivers want. They are two guys who are team players but in the end they each want to win.

"Our main objective is to win the race," he continued, "and we didn't like the look of a red car coming though at a far higher pace than our team."

At a time, Team boss Toto Wolff has accused Hamilton of "anarchy", Lowe was loathe to get involved in the semantics of whether the Briton had deliberately flouted team orders.

"I don't want to comment too much on the subject, because we weren't driving the car," he said. "Who knows what the real pace is of a car when you're not driving it. It did present some challenges. In the end, Lewis and Nico are out there racing.

"It was great to see Sebastian coming through, with what turned out to be a very good strategy from Ferrari to get him ahead of the two Red Bulls, that was unexpected," he admitted. "It was nail-biting stuff on the pit-wall, those final two laps... would Vettel get through Nico or even Lewis? We don't often see four cars crossing the line within what felt like a second and half."

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by Schnauzers, 30/11/2016 17:06

"Had the situation been reversed (Points and positions after the first corner) I cannot believe Hamilton would not have done his damnedest to pass Rosberg, and probably would have done it - that's one difference between the two."

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2. Posted by Pavlo, 30/11/2016 11:13

"karel: so you wanted Abu-Dhabi GP to be canceled, right? The person who admits loss before it's lost and gives victory to his opponent is simply not the champion at all. What true great champion does, is fight till it's possible to win within the rules - and that's exactly what Lewis did.
4-Wheel Drifter: yes, the points system is fair by definition because when rules are defined before the start and equal for everyone. Apart from this, it's fair because that's what F1 is about - Vettel did make the fastest lap, but still it's fair he is only 3rd. Alonso has 2nd fastest time and he is only 10th. Same with the season - now points system is focused on consistency. Make it more depending on victories and podiums, and people who has to start last (like Max after his spin or Nico after the crash in Malaysia) can as well retire immediately - what for to fight through the field if you are not Sauber and don't care about that 1 point? That's not what I would like to see.
re they good? That's another question, but as I wrote already, the ideas you offer will just make it worse. Maybe a bit of increase for victory will help, but 40 points is too much.
"

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3. Posted by karel, 30/11/2016 9:31

"For me it's about sportmanship, and Lewis is very poor at it, this tells me something about the guy. He knew the tittle was lost so why not to start doing things like slowing down in the hope that Nico was caught by vettel or verstappen. A great champion would admit loss and maybe even gives victory to his team mate . About racing, for years Mercedes has the upper edge delivering cars 2 seconds faster then all the rest, so what racing?"

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4. Posted by 4-Wheel Drifter, 29/11/2016 23:58

"I have to agree with Superbird; the points system not only needs adjustment and should award more points for winning; it needs NOT to be rigged to artificially introduce title hunts based on 'consistency'as a way of raising fan interest. This year, for example, Lewis had seventeen podiums with ten wins, three seconds and four thirds and had TWO DNFs (Spain & Malaysia) and Nico had sixteen podiums with nine wins, five second places and two third places. Who won? Nico. Something is definitely fishy when nine wins beats ten. All you have to do is make the points reflect the difference between winning and all the rest (it is, after all, racing, a board (and boring) game). Second place is, and always will be, only 'the best of the rest.' How to fix it. Simple: make a win worth 40 points and keep the rest of the points as they are. Want another example from this past season: Vettel had seven podiums (3 second places and four third places) and Verstappen had eight podiums (one win, five second places and two third places) yet Seb nets 212 points to Max's 204. Who can say, without wincing, that THAT's fair?"

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5. Posted by Pavlo, 29/11/2016 14:02

"Mugmug: no, they were racing. You forgot which sport you watch - it's not WRC, where the pure speed wins. It's F1, where your speed doesn't matter, you fight against others. What they did.
Superbird70: The only choice is to have one race in the championship. If you have at least three, any point system will lead to the case where in the last race it's enough to finish not lower than your opponent finished on his another race. Or you just have 1 point for victory and nothing else - but then the championship will end much earlier and only 3-4 drivers in 3 teams wanting to participate at all."

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6. Posted by Mad Matt, 28/11/2016 14:55

"As Nico said "Lewis did it very well, driving slowly in the parts where you can't overtake and faster on other parts of the track", or words to that effect.

So, what's Nico to do? He can harass Lewis hoping he'll make a mistake but if he sits on his tail like that the most likely result is that he'll use up his tyres and still not get past, instead he'll definitely fall into the hands of the chasers.

I know some people like to imagine that Max and Lewis can magically get past anyone in any circumstance but the reality is that they can't. We've seen both of them kept behind by other drivers, despite their undoubted talents for overtaking.

Sadly I don't think next year's regulation changes are going to help. I hope I'm wrong but I'm worried we'll just see a faster traveling queue.

"

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7. Posted by Superbird70, 28/11/2016 14:01

"Mugmug, exactly. Maybe the points system needs to overhauled yet again. Obviously a win isn't worth enough points if only the positions that want to race are from three on down. "

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8. Posted by Mugmug, 28/11/2016 12:51

""In the end,Lewis and Nico are out there racing". That's the problem, THEY WERE NOT RACING!"

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9. Posted by Ubarrow, 28/11/2016 11:59

"A car in front of you on a racetrack, going very slowly, if only there was a solution ........."

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