Formula 1: Toto Wolff insists there is no favoritism at Mercedes

Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport executive director Toto Wolff insists that there is no favoritism at the Formula 1 team as far as their two drivers go.

On lap 52 of the 67-lap German Grand Prix, the 11th race of the 21-race 2018 Formula 1 season, around the the 17-turn, 2.842-mile (4.574-kilometer) Hockenheimring in Am Motodrom, Hockenheim, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, Scuderia Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel threw away what was literally a sure victory by losing control of his car and sliding off into the turn 12 barrier.

This crash caused a safety car to come out, and it moved Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport’s Valtteri Bottas to the lead of the race. It also moved Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen to second place and Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton to third.

Bottas and Raikkonen decided to pit for new tires. Hamilton was about to come into the pits, but at the last second, he drove from the pit entry lane across the grass and back onto the race track, which is a topic for a whole other discussion.

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Hamilton now led the race with Bottas in second place and Raikkonen in third. Aston Martin Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen was running in fourth ahead of Renault Sport’s Nico Hulkenberg, who was the higher running of the two German drivers with Vettel now out of the race, in fifth.

Following the restart, which took place with 10 laps to go, Bottas got a number of good runs on Hamilton, which would have made him the leader of the race and likely the eventual winner seeing as how he was on newer tires. However, after the two Mercedes drivers got right beside one another heading down to turn seven, Mercedes told Bottas to let Hamilton go and hold station in second place.

With team orders being such a hot topic in Formula 1 among drivers, teams and fans, this team order to Bottas naturally caused a lot of people to speculate that Mercedes simply wanted Hamilton to win the race since he is their top driver in the driver standings.

However, Mercedes executive director Toto Wolff insists that this is not the case. He claims that the team simply wanted to ensure that their drivers finished the race in first and second place without risking one of both of their races in the process. He insisted that the same call would have been made had Bottas been the race leader with Hamilton attempting to pass him from second.

Here is what Wolff had to say about the matter, according to Motorsport Week.

"“It’s hard to sum up a Grand Prix like this one in a few sentences but things were unfolding in an interesting way when the rain came.“Valtteri was planning to make the one-stop plan work and looked like he was in better shape with his tyres than the Ferraris ahead. Likewise, Lewis had great pace running long on the soft tyre, then was poised to hunt down the guys in front in the second part of the race.“Things were pretty chaotic when the Safety Car came out – it was a very late call, a lot of traffic on the radio and we ended up with one car in the pits and one car out on track. In the end, this covered every option for us – then the battle was on when they went back to racing.“With so much at stake, and after the misfortune of recent weeks, we took the call to tell Valtteri to hold position; it would have been the same if the cars had been the other way round, too, because we needed to protect the one-two and avoid losing one or both cars.“After the drama of Silverstone and then qualifying , this is a dream result and that unpredictability is the beauty of sport. But our focus will turn quickly to Hungary, where we will have to do it all over again next weekend.”"

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Do you believe that Toto Wolff is telling the truth by claiming that Mercedes would have made the same call for both of their drivers to hold their positions at the end of the German Grand Prix had Valtteri Bottas been leading the race ahead of Lewis Hamilton in second place as opposed to the other way around?