Toto Wolff has said that Mercedes are reluctant to issue any "brutal" team orders this year.

Before he won in Russia, closing the points gap to his teammate Lewis Hamilton to just 10 points, team newcomer Valtteri Bottas was asked to move aside in Bahrain.

However, Mercedes boss Wolff says that orders will be used as rarely as possible.

"The topic is rightly very controversial - nobody wants to see it," he told German news agency SID.

Yet he also said recently that, after three years of dominance, Mercedes now need to tweak their approach.

That is because the new rules "put everything back to zero", and Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel did an "exceptionally good job".

"There may be situations where one of the two is faster for whatever reason and we must think of the team winning the race," said Wolff.

However, he said that the days of crude position-swapping like Michael Schumacher-Rubens Barrichello in 2002 are over.

"No, I think that was a different era. Such brutality of team orders is not our intention," said Wolff.

Wolff said that he is proud the top two teams are clearly ahead of all other 2017 challengers.

"This is clear proof of our strength as a team," he added.

He also feels that it is good for F1 that the two drivers at the top of the championship at the moment are Vettel and Hamilton.

"For the championship it's a good thing that the drivers with the biggest personalities and almost 100 wins between them fight for the title," said Wolff.

The season continues this weekend with the Spanish Grand Prix.