Mercedes has decided not to punish Lewis Hamilton for his controversial race tactics at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
In one last attempt to salvage his championship chances, Hamilton backed teammate Nico Rosberg into the chasing pack in the closing stages of the final race of the season. Hamilton needed Rosberg to drop to fourth or lower to be back in with a chance of winning the title, but ultimately the tactic proved unsuccessful and Rosberg finished second.
Hamilton was told to speed up by both his race engineer and team technical boss Paddy Lowe, but ignored both orders, replying: "Paddy, er, I'm actually in the lead right now and quite comfortable."
Following the race, team boss Toto Wolff said he was in two minds as to how to deal with the situation, but Mercedes chairman Niki Lauda has now ruled out a punishment.
"There is no need to say anything to Lewis," he told the Daily Mail. "We have no problem about how he raced in Abu Dhabi. We have drawn a line under it."
Speaking at the Autosport Awards on Sunday night, Lowe gave some further insight into the debate going on behind the radio messages to Hamilton.
"When I told Lewis to speed up the next debate on the pit wall came from Toto to 'tell him again, he hasn't done it'," said Lowe. "So I said 'no, then I will look a complete pillock if I do that again'.
"James [Vowles] who sits to my right, is actually the most fantastic strategist. But it didn't compute with him that the driver wasn't going at the right speed. So he was struggling with that.
"And then it was 'well, make him speed up otherwise the graph shows we'll lose'. So the conversation I was having was 'don't you think once he sees a red car in the mirror he'll put the throttle in a bit harder?'
"So we were having our own debates. But I put a marker down."