Bottas accepts team orders: "We have certain rules"

Valtteri Bottas says that he understands why he was told to back off to allow Lewis Hamilton to come out of the pits ahead of him during Sunday's Singapore Grand Prix, with neither Mercedes finishing on the podium for just the second time this season.

Sebastian Vettel won from Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen as Ferrari made it three wins in a row for the first time in over a decade. 

Mercedes were expected to return to winning ways in Singapore but it didn't go that way, and Bottas said after the race: “The car ahead always gets priority with the strategy. Then if you try to offset the car who was behind benefits from it like I did.

“If I wanted to get ahead it would have been easy, but we have certain rules and it’s both ways so next time I’ll be in his situation it’s going to be the same for me so that’s fine.

“Obviously there was potential for better today I think but those are the rules.

“It felt like I really had good pace today but obviously you need a big pace delta to overtake the cars ahead. For sure we’ll analyse things but as a teams we could have done better today.”