The team orders would have been applied with Bottas leading also

Mercedes F1 boss, Toto Wolff, says he would have asked his drivers to stay in the final stages of the German Grand Prix, no matter who was ahead.

After the recovery of the safety car, Valtteri Bottas Lewis Hamilton, until the team intervened on the radio and told the Finn to hold the checkered flag.

When asked if the decision was a sign that the team now had a number one and a clear, Wolff insisted this is not the case.

"No, absolutely not," he said. "If it was the other way around, with Valtteri in the lead and Lewis second, we would have made the same call."

"It was to bring him home, regardless of who was in front." 19659003] "When they started to shake each other up at the restart, it was still raining in places, or it was still wet. "19659003" "And we had so much bad luck in the last two races that the scenario of losing a car, or two, was just something I did not even want to consider." [19659003] When asked if he was to talk about the situation with Bottas, he said, "We had eye contact on the podium."

"But what I'm doing?" I said to Valtteri is something that I would also say in the team, I would have done the same thing in the other way.

is the transparency we have in the team that we would not make a difference It was important to mark the double podium, the first and the second, in order to recover some of the points that we s lost by bad luck. "

Wolff says that there will be no team orders before the critical stages of the battle title.

" The race is the most important. We always said that if the championship was contending for its last third, or the last quarter, and that there was a big difference between the drivers, then we could make those unpopular calls. "19659003" But it's way too early to do that. As I said, we would have done it the other way.

With respect to Ferrari's decision to exchange Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel, "it's also a very difficult call, because from one side you want to optimize the result, and that's what you need to do, but on the other hand you have to give the two drivers a chance to win the race. [19659003"Kimiaétémalchanceuxinthefeweventsinthebeginningoftheseasonwherethestrategyhasbeencomparedandthee Ferrari struggled to find the right call there. It's understandable. "

Wolff also sympathized with Vettel after the German came out of the head.

" It was a mistake, but the feeling that I have, it's we want to win, and we fight I mean we are rivals, I can understand what it does and it is not good.

"And you have to find the right balance between attacking and keeping your head with guys coming in from behind, and then keeping the same path. "And it's not always easy, and today it's going against him, I'd say, whether under pressure or not, I can not comment."