George Russell's call for sit-down talks with Mercedes have been met with a response from the team's trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin.
Russell said after the Japanese Grand Prix that he wanted a "review" with his team after what he described as the "worst decision ever" during the race at Suzuka. He finished eighth, but had the team gone a different way with their strategy he felt he would have been able to improve on that.
He lost several seconds in the pit lane when he had to wait for his team-mate Lewis Hamilton to complete his own change of tyres. That delay meant he came back out onto the track further back than would otherwise have been the case.
"We need to review what went on," declared Russell. "I was right behind Lewis and double stacking, I was just going to lose all the positions. Not really much more to say, very frustrating afternoon – probably could have fought for P5.
"It was quite enjoyable out there, made some some good overtakes but we need to sit down with the team and see what we could have done better. That was probably at the time not the right thing to do." That was after he had already described it as "the worst decision we ever made", over team radio.
In response, Mercedes engineering chief Shovlin admitted in hindsight that it might not have been the best thing to do, but explained they felt the best thing to do at the time was to prioritise Hamilton who was hunting down Esteban Ocon for fourth place.
"There was only really the one decision point to make the in race which was when to come in for inters," he said. "It looked like the optimum would have been to follow the safety car in when we restarted which was surprising given the amount of water on the track.
"We'd called to bring both in together and that cost us a bit of time in the stops for George with the stacking – he'd have joined a couple of places further up if we'd waited a lap which would have given him a better chance of being part of the race that Lewis was having with Esteban.
"Saying that, Lewis was having a frustrating time trying to get through. He had good pace and we'd opted for a high downforce level expecting rain, but he just couldn't find a way past due to the straight-line speed." Hamilton finished fifth behind Ocon, while Russell was three places further back as the chequered flag flew.
