Eyeing the increasing threat from Ferrari, and Lewis Hamilton, Toto Wolff hints at team orders for George Russell and Kimi Antonelli.

While the full-on battles between the two Mercedes drivers is entertaining for the rest of us, in the Mercedes garage it is causing increasing concern.

Toto Wolff has made clear that his drivers are free to race providing there is no silliness - he has bitter experience - but with the increasing threat from Ferrari, not to mention his own team's reliability concerns, the Austrian admits that it may be time to calm things down.

"Today, we tried to race fair in the team game but maybe it has cost us the win today," he told Sky Sports post-race on Sunday. "That's something that we need to discuss with the drivers, how we are doing it if we are fighting somebody else for a race win?

"They raced each other quite hard before George's stop and I think we lost about four or five or six seconds to Lewis, and then obviously with the VSC it changed the order.

"George had an unbelievable beginning of the race," said the Austrian, "it looked like everybody was standing still behind him, but then the pace fell away. Towards the end of the other two stints, clearly Kimi had the advantage.

"We didn't interfere in them fighting, because that's how we've always raced," he insisted. "But it's a situation we need to look into for the future with both drivers how to handle a situation where there's a pace differential.

"If we are fighting for a victory, or the risk of losing a victory, and that's going to be an interesting discussion. But always totally transparent to the best interest of the team."

It may be pure coincidence but in Canada Russell suffered an engine issue as his battled his teammate, while in Spain it was Antonelli who was forced to retire, just moments after getting the better of the Briton.

However, other than this, and those heart in mouth battles, there is an elephant in the room, or rather a black horse.

"There is a third party now getting involved in the championship fight, constructors' and drivers'," Wolff admitted. "And in that respect, we will discuss internally with them, with the two drivers, how we want to handle the situation where we risk of holding each other up.

"I think it's not going to be a problem, it's just maybe we need to recalibrate."