After the race debrief Mercedes Director Toto Wolff has confirmed that Hamilton did not back Rosberg up on purpose and that it was all a consequence of preserving the tyres.
Wolff called it a positive debrief adding that there was no animosity between the drivers.
“I think he didn’t do it on purpose, and we’ve cleared that now,” he insisted. “There wasn’t any intention from Lewis to slow Nico down in order to make him finish third or worse, one hundred per cent.
Wolff put it down to the fact that Hamilton had to save his tyres as they were not sure how long the option tyre would last as they changed their strategy during the race to go from option-prime-prime to option-option-prime.
“He didn’t know the gaps behind Nico. What he knew was that he needed to take the tyre longer than we’ve ever run it the whole weekend, and this is why he decided to slow down in the way he did.
“Lewis was the car in the lead, he was controlling the pace. We were putting the option tyre on, although we were actually expecting to put the prime on, so our expected race would have been option-prime-prime.
“Also because we learned the lesson from Malaysia, we thought we might run into trouble with the option. And then we found out that our option was actually holding on much better than we expected, and much better than Ferrari.
“We tried to make sure that we could cover Ferrari with the option. We put the option on, the driver realises he has the option in, doesn’t know what’s going on behind him, and controls his pace, because he needs to take the option longer than expected.
“And he was controlling that pace. From his point of view, completely understandable.”
He explained Rosberg’s situation and said that it was completely understandable that Rosberg was getting a big edgy.
“Nico on the other side was really running into trouble, because he was bunched up behind Lewis, he couldn’t go any more near, so he asked for a 2secs gap to Lewis so he could at least protect the tyres a little bit, which he did”, said Wolff.
“And on the same time Sebastian was increasing the pace behind him. So understandable from both of them.”
