It's a shame that Lewis Hamilton's actions in the closing stages of the final race of the season took some of the limelight away from the career-long achievement of Nico Rosberg. That's not to say Hamilton did anything wrong on Sunday, but more that no-one -- including Mercedes' team bosses -- should have been surprised. Hamilton simply did what he, and everybody who competes in Formula One, is paid to do: try to find every last route to victory permitted under the regulations.
Yes, it was somewhat unorthodox to back his teammate into rival cars, but his driving didn't break the rules and didn't put anyone in danger. The fact that it was his teammate will no doubt ruffle a few feathers in the Mercedes hierarchy, but that is part of the wonderful dichotomy of Formula One. It is both a team sport and an individual pursuit, and if you race in it for long enough the two will clash.
So obvious was the strategy of backing Rosberg into the chasing pack, that it was put to team boss Toto Wolff in his post-qualifying media session the night before the race. The answer, even then, was far from straightforward.
"I've heard the comments before," Wolff said. "We can't really interfere in the final race, we have let them race until now. They both know what we deem as being sportsmanlike. There is a lot at stake tomorrow, it is a drivers' world championship to be won or lost.
"I think both will have thought about all possibilities, as long as they are not overstepping the mark in what we see as being unsportsmanlike driving we are fine. I think we need to let them go and race.
"We don't want to change the result tomorrow because it would be wrong for the title decider and turn everything upside down that we have developed in the last couple of years. The drivers are great sportsmen and they know what it would mean to overstep the line which would cause a lot of controversy and therefore I have trust this is going to go well tomorrow for the benefit of the team, the team spirit and the fans."
Whether Hamilton was unsportsmanlike in his tactics is a matter of opinion, but there can be no doubt that Mercedes u-turned on its plan not to get involved. When technical boss Paddy Lowe backed up the "instruction" from Hamilton's race engineer Peter Bonnigton for car 44 to speed up, it was the team's way of attempting to take control of the situation. The pit wall's race software was warning Lowe and his colleagues that Sebastian Vettel's Ferrari had the pace to whip the win away from under their noses and that meant Hamilton's fun and games had to stop. As we now know, Hamilton ignored the call from the pit wall and Mercedes still finished with a one-two. But did he "overstep the line" in doing so?
Mercedes has had no close competition in Formula One over the last three seasons, meaning its two drivers have enjoyed a head-to-head battle for the title each year. Just by observing Mercedes in the paddock it is possible to detect the strength of its team spirit, and it is that next-level teamwork that has undoubtedly been at the core of its success since 2014. Out of respect for the endless hard work going on at its bases in Brackley and Brixworth, the management expects its drivers to put the objectives of the three-pointed star ahead of their individual goals of being world champion. What's more, Mercedes has traded off its team spirit in much of its marketing over the past three years, meaning part of the sales patter around its road cars is based on the idea of teamwork achieving success and innovation. So when a single employee ignores the will of the team on the public stage, as Hamilton did in Abu Dhabi, it inevitably creates a problem.
"I'm in two minds," Wolff said after the race. "The one half of me says we have 1,500 people in the team, 300,000 in Daimler and that create values. They respect those values and undermining the structure in public means you are putting yourself before the team. It's very simple, it is like it is. And anarchy doesn't work within any team or any company."
The problem is that a racing driver like Hamilton is not like any other individual in a team. Although teamwork has been behind all his success throughout his career, his side of the job has centred around being a ruthless competitor on track. If, while in the cockpit of a racing car, he thinks about the objectives of anyone other than himself, he would cease to be the great competitor he is. It must be remembered that a Formula One team is unlike any other company in the world in that it relies on two egotistical individuals to deliver the end result. For those two individuals to operate at the best of their abilities -- and therefore realise the potential of all the people they represent -- they have to be driven by their own individual goals of world championships.
It's been said that Hamilton's actions could be far more damaging in future seasons when Mercedes' rivals are closer, but equally that kind of competitive spirit could be the difference between the team winning and losing a title. Ultimately, if you employ Lewis Hamilton you get both sides of the coin -- usually for the better, very occasionally for the worse.
Which leads us to the question of why Mercedes delivered a team order over the public pit-to-car radio that it knew was going to be ignored? It could be that the team was naïve in the belief Hamilton would follow it -- a theory put forward by rival team boss Christian Horner after the race; it could be that it wanted to relieve itself of any accusations of bias should Hamilton's tactics be successful and Rosberg find himself losing the championship in controversial circumstances; or it could be that it wanted to uphold the integrity of its internal rules regardless of the headlines it created after the race. Whatever the reason, it issued an order that was never going to be obeyed. Forget Catch-22, this was Catch-44.
"It was clear we would only interfere if our number one objective of winning the race is under threat," Wolff explained. "Now, you can be philosophical whether in such a particular situation of a driver winning or losing a world championship, you need to forget about those principles that have helped us these last four years.
"But then on the other side does that mean only for the deciding race or does it mean straight from the beginning? Because Melbourne could be the deciding race at the beginning of the season. You could say let them off the leash and full steam ahead, provide great entertainment, fantastic headlines like we have had today I guess, but less race wins and maybe less championships. I'm prepared to have the discussion. Because I'm just not sure yet."
Wolff later added: "We could change the [internal] rules for next year because it doesn't work in those critical races. Maybe we want to give them even more freedom in racing each other."
Some would see that as allowing the tail to wag the dog, but perhaps the long-term health of the team would be better served by ditching a set of internal rules that will only ever lead controversy. At three crucial flashpoints of the season -- in Spain, Austria and Abu Dhabi -- the agreement made in the calm of a meeting room in Melbourne was disregarded. There is no indication that that will change in the future, so why set yourself up to fail?
Every true racer in Brackley and Brixworth must understand the thought process behind Hamilton's actions in Abu Dhabi, so isn't that enough to justify it to the rest of team? Even Rosberg played down the event, saying he could see why his teammate drove the way he did. It is, after all, a racing team and the Mercedes brand gets the best publicity when its drivers truly race one another. The bickering that comes after is what the management should seek to cut out.