Mercedes boss Toto Wolff says a strange radio message addressed to Valtteri Bottas during his battle with teammate Lewis Hamilton in the Austrian Grand Prix was not a coded 'Multi 21' team order.
Bottas and Hamilton were comfortably leading Sunday's race when gearbox issues sparked concern in the Mercedes camp, with the German outfit's pitwall urging both drivers to remain clear of the Red Bull Ring's kerbs.
But the warning was followed by an enigmatic radio message to the Finn who was told "Urgent Chassis Default Two One", a code that was interpreted by some as a potential 'Multi 21' situation, a reference to the controversial order handed to Red Bull drivers Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel at the Malaysian Grand Prix in 2013.
©Mercedes
But Wolff denied that was the case.
"Don't get paranoid! This is nothing to do with Multi 21," said the Mercedes boss.
"We have never played that, unless there was a problem on the car, and we would never interfere in a fight in the first few races of a season. They were completely free to race each other.
"What we did, that we always do on both cars, we gave them the same recommendations to stay off the kerbs. And because there was no competitor basically at a certain stage, we switched the engines to a lower mode to protect the power unit.
"There was no, zero team orders. No hidden, no subtle, and no direct."
However, Wolff admitted that a team order was contemplated by the Mercedes pitwall in the closing stages of the race, after Hamilton had been handed a five-second time penalty by the stewards for colliding with Red Bull's Alex Albon.
Swapping Bottas and Hamilton's position would have perhaps enabled Mercedes maintain its one-two positions at the front. But the team's strategist eventually thought the better of the scheme.
"Maybe with all the information afterwards we would have gotten P3. There was a discussion, but that starts to get really messy," Wolff explained.
"We've had it in Budapest many years ago, and we nearly got overtaken by Verstappen.
"The thinking that I had was that you need to explain to Valtteri what is going on, that there is a five-second penalty, and then ask Lewis in the last lap to let Valtteri pass again.
"So if Valtteri can't keep up, he can't let him past, and if Leclerc and Norris on fresh tyres are on his gearbox, then obviously Valtteri rather than winning the race ends up fourth.
"Too much complexity to do such a switch. Too much risk."
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