BARCELONA, Spain -- Toto Wolff has raised the possibility of issuing team orders to Mercedes' drivers after Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton beat his drivers to victory at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix.
Hamilton became the first non-Mercedes driver to win a grand prix this season after he outperformed George Russell and Kimi Antonelli during Sunday's race in Spain.
Hamilton gained the lead thanks to an alternative tyre strategy and then benefitted from a well-time Virtual Safety Car (VSC) to make his third and final pit stop without losing position.
The Ferrari driver's superior race pace allowed him to pull away from the Mercedes duo, with Antonelli overtaking Russell for second place before the Italian retired with a power unit issue.
Wolff pointed to the time lost by Mercedes' drivers while battling for position and hinted that team orders might be implemented in the future.
"Today, we tried to race fair in the team game but maybe it has cost us the win today," Wolff told Sky Sports in Spain. "That's something that we need to discuss with the drivers: how we are doing it if we are fighting somebody else for a race win?
"They raced each other quite hard before George's stop and I think we lost about four or five or six seconds to Lewis, and then obviously with the VSC it changed the order."
Wolff stressed that any action would be subject to discussions with the drivers, rather than team management unilaterally imposing rules on Antonelli and Russell.
"George had an unbelievable beginning of the race, it looked like everybody was standing still behind him, but then the pace fell away," Wolff said. "Towards the end of the other two stints, clearly Kimi had the advantage.
"We didn't interfere in them fighting, because that's how we've always raced. But it's a situation we need to look into for the future with both drivers how to handle a situation where there's a pace differential.
"If we are fighting for a victory, or the risk of losing a victory, and that's going to be an interesting discussion. But always totally transparent to the best interest of the team."
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Wolff spoke on Sunday about the title threat posed by Hamilton, who is now 41 points behind Antonelli in the drivers' championship and nine points ahead of Russell.
The Mercedes boss said the presence of the Ferrari driver in the title fight may require his team to "recalibrate" the way it goes racing.
"There is a third party now getting involved in the championship fight -- constructors' and drivers'," he said. "And in that respect, we will discuss internally with them, with the two drivers, how we want to handle the situation where we risk of holding each other up.
"I think it's not going to be a problem, it's just maybe we need to recalibrate."
