Hamilton 'felt disrespected' by Wolff and Lowe

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Lewis Hamilton says he "felt quite disrespected" by Mercedes bosses Toto Wolff and Paddy Lowe over their handling of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

With the championship on the line, Hamilton backed up Nico Rosberg during the latter stages of the race in an attempt to leave his team-mate under threat from Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen behind. Hamilton's approach was due to him needing to win the race and have Rosberg finish outside the top three in order to defend his title.

Lowe informed Hamilton to speed up during the race - something Wolff called the highest escalation of the Mercedes team order - before Wolff himself suggested the Briton could be punished for ignoring the call. While he won the race but lost the championship, Hamilton cites the situation as one he remains unhappy with.

"That was one of many uncomfortable moments of the year," Hamilton told Channel 4. "Ultimately, seeing what had been said afterwards, I felt quite disrespected by the individuals who had spoken. You don't expect that from those who are in charge of so many people."

Although Wolff has since admitted Mercedes should have let the two drivers race, when asked if the situation has since been resolved, Hamilton replied: "No, it hasn't."

And the triple world champion admits he is still struggling to come to terms with suffering reliability problems in 2016, such as when he retired from the lead of the Malaysian Grand Prix.

"When you have something in your head, it's there. You think it can't be a coincidence that all these things have happened."

When Hamilton's comments were put to Rosberg himself, the retiring drivers' champion added: "So he felt disrespected? OK, interesting. That's a new one."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.