Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff has indicated the team could start favouring Lewis Hamilton in his title battle against Sebastian Vettel from the Singapore GP.
Currently, the Briton sits 17 points ahead of the Ferrari driver but the momentum is swinging in the German's favour after victory at Spa-Francorchamps in a car that does appear superior to the Silver Arrow at this stage of the season.
Bottas sits in fourth place 87 points behind his teammate and with just seven races to go after the Italian Grand Prix on Sunday, the Austrian admits a tough decision is likely to be made.
"I hate to do that," Wolff was quoted by F1i.com. "It's completely against my racing instinct. We try to be very neutral to both drivers.
"Let's see how Monza pans out and how it goes. Then we will address the question as to whether we need to put all force behind one driver.
"But at the moment, we owe it to the two men and to Formula 1 to not interfere in the race."
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Despite the claims of total parity between Hamilton and Bottas, Mercedes did ask the Finn to hold station at Hockenheim and suspicions were raised after Wolff described the 28-year-old as a "sensational wingman" after the Hungarian GP.
"We haven't done it [team orders]. We haven't done it yet. We haven't discussed it," he insisted.
