Lowe defends Mercedes stance

Mercedes team boss Paddy Lowe has defended his teams stance in the wake of the recent Mexico and Brazil Grand Prix.

The German manufacturer has spent millions of pounds on its Formula One programme and has enjoyed two years of dominance since the switch to v6 turbo-hybrid power-units.

Mercedes hit the ground running resulting in back-to-back drivers and constructors titles in 2014 and 2015.

The driver line-up of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg has been hugely successful, with both finishing first and second last season and this.

The duo have taken a combined 34 victories and 22 one-two finishes since Hamilton made the switch from McLaren to Mercedes in 2013.

Mercedes team boss Paddy Lowe believes that the team provide their drivers with the chance to go toe-to-toe each race, something other teams in the past such as Ferrari and Red Bull have not done.

‘It’s very important to the team to have two strong drivers, two fully motivated drivers, And that includes the belief that they can win, and not just races, but championships. We’ve got that in spades in this team to an extent that I can’t really recall since Senna/Prost. Lowe told motorsport.com.

‘That makes for fantastic racing, and while the sport gets criticised and we get criticised for some reason for our dominance, in a position of dominance the thing you must provide is some competition between the two drivers.

‘I think we’re allowing that, and I think we have two drivers that are capable of delivering it, because they can both be stronger than the other at different race tracks. So it’s perfect.’

The criticism he refers to is the accusation that the team have manufactured recent results to favour Nico Rosberg after the German took pole position in both Mexico and Brazil.

Hamilton was unable to challenge on track due to the lack of the design of the tracks and Mercedes refused to split strategies for Hamilton to gamble to beat Rosberg via pit-stops.

This led to the British driver realistically unable to challenge for race victories since winning the 2015 Formula One World Championship.