Hamilton and Russell went🍌 head-to-head on track on several occasions at Suzuka.

At one point, both drivers went off the track at Spoon as Hamilton defended the position frꦓom Russell.

• Sky commentators question Mercedes strategy: “Why change in the firs🉐t p💎lace?”

The pair’s battle went down to the final laps, with a spli💟t in strategy resulting in convergence at the end of the race. 

Hamilton was able to get past Russell after Mercedes deployed team orders, leaving the latter vulnerable to 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Carlos Sainz behind.

Reflecting on the battle, Bradley Lord - who is acting as a Toto Wolff stand-in alongside Jerome d’Ambrosio - said: “They ra♓ce each other hard on a hard-racing track. It’s easy to read a lot into those radio messages in the heat of the moment. As always, we talk about it away from the pressure and the high temperatures of the cockpit in the debrief after. 

“That’s where anything gets tidied up that needs tidying up. The one-stop worked fo🎐r Lewis. With George, he was ahead of Alonso. It offered an opportunity to Sainz. It didn’t quite work out ultimately but it was worth a gamble.”

Mercedes lost furth﷽༺er ground to Ferrari in the race for second in the constructors’ championship behind Red Bull.

“It was a battle out there from the point where Lewis had contact with Perez on the straight. It put us on the back foot, we lost position o☂n Lap 1,” Lord added. “It was a case of how far we could fight back from there.

“Lewis drove to the limit of the car on the two-stop, George rolled the dice on a one-stop. We tried to see if﷽ we could make it work. Fifth and seventh is better than sixth and seventh, and it helps to minimise the points difference to ꦚFerrari.”