Nico Rosberg: 'Hamilton compromised my race'

Image Courtesy: Mercedes AMG F1

Nico Rosberg believes his Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton compromised his race by backing off in the second stint and making him fall into the clutches of third place runner Sebastian Vettel.

Lewis Hamilton comfortably led the race from Nico Rosberg but appeared to slow down after the first round of pitstops, prompting the latter to complain to his team.

This allowed Vettel to close in on Rosberg and have an opportunity to undercut him in the pits. While Rosberg managed to stay in the front of the Ferrari driver, he remained furious in the post-race press conference.

”It’s just interesting to hear from you Lewis that you were just thinking about yourself with the pace in front when necessarily that was compromising my race,’’ Rosberg was quoted in the press conference. “Driving slower than was necessary in the beginning of the stint meant that Sebastian was close to me and it opened up the opportunity for Sebastian to try an early pit stop to try and jump me and then I had to cover him.:

“It was unnecessarily close with Sebastian as a result and also it cost me a lot of race time as a result because I had to cover him. And then my tyres died at the end of the race because my stint was just so much longer, So I’m unhappy about that,’’ he added.

In his defence, Hamilton said that Rosberg could have simply overtaken him, if he found him to be to slow. He denied that he intentionally ran at that pace.

“It’s not my job to look after Nico’s race - it’s my job to manage the car and bring the car home as healthy and as fast as possible", the Briton said. "That’s what I did, I didn’t do anything intentionally to slow any of the cars up, I was just focused on myself. If Nico wanted to get by he could have tried, but he didn’t."