Hamilton receives team boss backing

Lewis Hamilton has received the backing of Red Bull Racing team boss Christian Horner following his antics at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

With the Formula One World Championship on the line seemingly everyone knew that the only tactic Lewis Hamilton had available to him was to try and back his Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg into trouble from behind.

Rosberg held a 12 point advantage over Hamilton going into the final race of the season, this meant that winning the race was not enough for Hamilton if he was to fight for the championship until the chequered flag fell.

Hamilton needed Rosberg to finish off the podium and his only available option, if you were to rule out trying to cause a collision, was to back Rosberg into the chasing pack of Red Bull Racing and Ferrari.

Hamilton tried his best to do this, whilst still comfortably leading the race, but this still saw interference from the Mercedes team who instructed Hamilton to go faster.

The Brit refused and Hamilton is supposedly now in line for a disciplinary which could be as little as a fine, or as much as a race suspension or even sacking [summary of the papers by Sky Sports].

But Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner backed Hamilton’s actions and branded Mercedes naive for thinking they could interfere in the drivers world championship, when they already had the constructors championship and a one-two finish in the drivers championship secured.

‘He played completely within the rules. Winning the race wasn’t going to be enough for him, he needed cars between him and if he’d have charged off into the distance he would never have?created that possibility.

‘I didn’t see that he did anything wrong.

‘There’s only two drivers competing for the world championship, it was totally obvious that he was going to do that.’ Horner told motorsport.com.

He added: ‘With where they were at, it was just down to those two guys, So it was only ever going to be that kind of battle between the two of them.

‘Congratulations to Nico, he has driven a great season this year. He is a very worthy world champion but it was naive to think that there would be any different approach to this race with what is at stake.’