George Russell said Mercedes was right to ask him to move over and let teammate and title rival Kimi Antonelli by at the Dutch Grand Prix even if it cost him ground in the championship.
Russell found himself in second on old mediums at the end of the Zandvoort race, with Antonelli and the two Ferraris further back on fresh soft tires.
The other three had benefited from the timing of a late virtual safety car in the closing stages. At the restart, as Antonelli sliced at the gap to Russell, Mercedes told him it would invert the cars -- in other words, told him to not fight his teammate, who has a healthy championship lead.
Russell obeyed and let him go before holding Lewis Hamilton off -- thanks in part to another safety car near the end, which might have suggested he could have kept Antonelli at bay too despite the tire disadvantage.
Holding third meant Russell, who won Saturday's sprint race, lost three points to Antonelli in the title fight.
"I mean, Kimi was ahead of me anyway," Russell said after the race on the decision. "He deserved to finish ahead. When you're in the race you want to fight for every position, but with the pace on the new tire he would have overtaken anyway. Just happy to be standing on the podium. It's been a strong weekend for me, so I'll take the positives."
The result meant Russell is level with Hamilton in the championship at second on 183 points -- but Antonelli extended his lead out in front to 59.
Russell elaborated on the decision later and why he did not feel hard done by. "We've always said as a team when we're on different strategies we're never going to fight, and we're always going to do what's better," Russell said.
"That's always just been our sort of rules, and the fact is Kimi was ahead of me before the VSC [virtual safety car], and he tried something different to, you know, protect us as a team. He kind of copy-pasted what the Ferraris did."
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When asked if he could have kept Antonelli at bay as he did with Hamilton, Russell said he easily could have battled to stay in front and ruined his tires completely.
"Maybe, but equally it could have been a P5 as well, so in the end he deserved to be P2. I think P3 was a fair result for me, and it's a long season," he added.
Team boss Toto Wolff defended the decision, saying the presence of the two charging Ferrari drivers right behind Antonelli meant the team had to act and not squander the strong position. He added that Russell could have expected the same treatment had the positions been reversed and he had been the one on the fresher tires.
"Obviously, team orders are always harsh from one driver's perspective," Wolff said after the race. "You can't expect a lion in the car and then a walkover at the same time, but it's what we always discuss and was something we agree always on the Sunday morning strategy meeting. We're not losing time with each other if there's competitors breathing down the neck. We've seen it with the Ferraris at the beginning of the year in Shanghai.
"You just lose so much race time. You're losing more points, and that's why we are trying to be proactive and avoid losing any points. And today wasn't a very difficult call because Kimi was running second clear of George, and that's basically the order we restored after the stop. So completely normal modus operandi, and we would have done it the other way around."