Nico Rosberg believes any weight behind the theory of Mercedes favouring George Russell was dispelled in Lewis Hamilton’s swansong in Abu Dhabi.

Russell came out on top of the intra-Mercedes team-mate battle in Hamilton‘s final year with the team, particularly in qualifying, leading some fans to theorise the Brackley-based squad had favoured the driver who will remain with the team next season.

Nico Rosberg: Toto Wolff call proves no favouritism

With the dynamic of the relationship between Mercedes and Hamilton changing as the seven-time F1 World Champion leaves for Ferrari after this month, fans had speculated online that Mercedes would thus favour Russell in every way and, disturbingly, even suggested that Mercedes would actively try to sabotage Hamilton’s form in his final year with the team.

Addressing the topic of favouritism on the Sky F1 podcast after the Abu Dhabi GP, in which Hamilton used a contra-strategy of Hard to Medium tyres to catch and overtake Russell with a thrilling move on the final lap of the race, Nico Rosberg poured cold water on the idea that Russell has been favoured.

“Oh no, I’m pretty sure they didn’t,” Rosberg said – the German having raced as Hamilton’s teammate at Mercedes between 2013 and ’16.

“I’m pretty sure they didn’t favour George. One of the best times to see that was Toto Wolff’s [team boss] comment in the race, when Lewis came out of the box and he was 14 seconds behind George.

“He said, ‘So how many seconds?’ And Bono [Pete Bonnington, Hamilton’s race engineer] said 14.

“And Lewis said, ‘Geez, that’s far down the road’. And Toto came on the radio and said, ‘You can do this, Lewis.’

“This is talking about the teammates! ‘Oh, Lewis, you can do this!’

“If I was George and I listened back on this, I’d be like, ‘Toto, Hey, what’s up with that? You should be neutral here.’

“So that’s because they were under a lot of pressure, the team, because, because a lot of fans, every time Lewis gets beaten by George, a lot of fans are like, ‘Oh, this is sabotage’.

“The pressure was on Mercedes, and I could see, for Toto, it was so important to show the world that there was no preferential treatment towards George and that they were fair because, I mean, Lewis is the legend.

“There’s such a tension on there, and it would have been really, really bad on Mercedes if there would have been any, any preference going towards George.

“That’s why Mercedes could never allow themselves and they went to a big extent to actually prove and keep showing that there was no preferential treatment.”

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Toto Wolff: Zero respect for online cowards

Earlier this year, an anonymous email was sent to members of the F1 community by someone claiming to work at Mercedes, making scurrilous allegations of the “systemic sabotage” of Hamilton by the team.

This resulted in Mercedes contacting the police, who opened an investigation into the matter, with Wolff explaining that the situation was “upsetting, particularly when there is somebody talking about death and all these things.

“So, on this particular one, I have instructed to go full force – we have the police inquiring, we are researching the IP address, we are researching the phone, all of that. Online abuse in that way needs to stop.”

Confirming the email had not originated from a member of the team, the theory at Mercedes was that a fan had accessed an email list pertaining to an email attack targetting Christian Horner earlier in the year.

“People can’t hide behind their phones or their computers and abuse teams or drivers in a way like this,” Wolff said.

“I don’t know what some of the conspiracy theorists and lunatics think out there.”

“Lewis was part of the team for 12 years. We have a friendship, we trust each other. We want to end this on a high, we want to celebrate the relationship and, if you don’t believe all of that, you can believe that we want to win the Constructors’ Championship and part of the World Championship is making both cars win – so to all of these mad people out there, take a shrink.”

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