Wolff promises equal treatment between Hamilton and Russell

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff has vowed that his drivers George Russell and Lewis Hamilton will receive equal treatment in the rest of the season despite the looming departure of the seven-time world champion.

The Monaco Grand Prix saw George Russell and Lewis Hamilton run two different specifications of the W15. While Russell received the latest version of front wing, Lewis Hamilton raced with the older version as the team had only a single piece of the revised front wing available in the Principality.

Mercedes explained after the Monaco race weekend that it was Hamilton who elected against using the new front wing after trying it out in the simulator. The Briton's W15 will be equipped with the new front wing in the forthcoming Canadian Grand Prix.

Team boss Toto Wolff said that Mercedes is always intent on providing its drivers with the same equipment and Hamilton and Russell will receive the same treatment despite the departure of the seven-time world champion.

"All drivers [are] a bit sceptical at times. I think as a team, we’ve demonstrated that even in the most tense competitions between team-mates, we are trying to always balance it right and be transparent and fair.

"As a team we are 100 per cent on a mission of giving the two drivers two great cars, the best possible cars, and the best possible strategies and support."

Mercedes kicked off the third season of the new era of ground-effect cars with a series of disappointing results. The team has failed to score a podium finish so far this year with George Russell's fifth-placed finishes in Bahrain and Monaco having been the team's best results.

The more alarming sign for Mercedes is that they appeared to be the second-quickest team in the first two years of the new technical era in certain periods of the past two seasons, but they have clearly fallen behind the field-leading trio of Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari this year.

Wolff said that it is natural that a team that dominated for a long period in the past falls behind following an utterly successful period.

"We have finished first 115 times and have been beaten in the last 50 races. This is not where we want to be and the feeling we are experiencing is horrible.

"Ferrari hasn't won a constructors' championship since 2008. Red Bull failed to do so for eight years in a row because we were the ones who won. We have to put things in perspective: it's the third year we haven't won, it's not eight and it's not 16," Wolff concluded.