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Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff says Lewis Hamilton asking for George Russell to overtake him at the Japanese Grand Prix was “extremely fair play”.
At one point in the Japanese Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton went on the team radio and asked the team if he should let George Russell overtake him.
“Shall I let George by?” he asked.
Soon after Russell was told by the team: “So Lewis will let you by. He’s struggling with a lot of understeer.”
After the race Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff was asked about this – quite unusual – request.
“There’s an easy explanation behind it,” the Austrian told Channel 4.
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“Lewis again also we experimented on some things on his car and it looked like there was much worse degradation because of that on the front axle.
“And that’s why he said ‘I’m going to let him pass’, because it’s testing, like I say. And that was extremely fair play.
“It wasn’t like he was giving up a position for a podium, it was really trying to understand why wasn’t he fast at that stage.
“And that was clearly because we were doing something to the car which we wanted to try,” Wolff concluded.
