Hamilton started in seventh two places ahead of Russell but lost a position to Charles Leclerc when the race was resumed after a big first-lap crash between Daniel Ricciardo and Alex Albon resulted in a red flag and standing restart.
As the gap between the Mercedes cars rapidly began to close, Hamilton came onto team radio to ask whether he should let Russell through, before he was instructed to do as the switch was made on lap 14.
Hamilton offering to let his team-mate through with them both on the same strategy was uncharacteristic, with the seven-time world champion having engaged in several fierce battles with Russell last season.
“I think I picked up a bit of damage at the beginning with Charles, he came around the outside,” Hamilton told Sky Sports F1.
“I had huge understeer for the first stint. I couldn’t turn the car through any of the corners. “That’s why I let George by.”
The Mercedes pair ultimately finished the race having swapped their starting positions of seventh and ninth, with both abandoning a potential one-stop strategy after switching to hard tyres during the early red-flag stoppage.
Hamilton said that Mercedes’ strategic choices weren’t responsible for their failure to advance through the field in Suzuka.
Asked if Mercedes could have done something different, he said: “Nothing, I don’t think. I don’t know what the different strategy would have been, whether it was staying on the medium to start with but we still had two really terrible hard tyres to run through, so a real challenge today.”
Mercedes’ decision to switch to the hard was influenced by the fact they had two new sets of the compound available, compared to just one of the medium, which ultimately proved to be stronger.
“The hard tyre was pretty bad,” Hamilton added. “The medium tyre was much better, so yeah, in hindsight it looks like we should have had two medium tyres. But in general, the car was pretty bad.”
(skysports)
