Lewis Hamilton has caused a stir by revealing that Nico Rosberg admitted that he could have avoided the controversial contact in Belgium – but didn’t as he wanted to prove a point.
Hamilton said that the conversation occurred in a post-race meeting with Toto Wolff and Paddy Lowe. The news is bound to have further repercussions within the team, and possibly with the FIA. The stewards gave Rosberg the benefit of the doubt and classed it as a racing incident.
“IWe just had a meeting about it and he basically said he did it on purpose,” said Hamilton. “He said he did it on purpose – he said he could have avoided it. He said ‘I did it to prove a point.’ He basically said I did it to prove a point. You don’t have to just rely on me, go and ask Toto about it and those guys, who were not happy with him as well.”
He continued: “What we’re told to do is we have to finish for the team. The team has priority, always. Even if they say we can race, the team has priority, it doesn’t mean that we can go out there and crash into each other.
“I thought today was going to be a good day. When I started second I knew that I was on a different strategy to him, like we’ve had in the previous races, I knew that I would be on the prime in the middle stint, so I knew that I had a chance if I didn’t get him at the start, I’d have a chance later. I knew that if I overtook him at the start, he would have that chance. I knew that it would be a long race, a hard race, and I thought we’d have a good one.”
Hamilton was adamant that the contact was not his fault.
“This year the team have allowed us to race and we’ve been good at racing wheel-to-wheel closely. I think I heard someone say that it was inevitable that we were going to crash one day, I don’t feel that today was that inevitability. I took the inside line, I had the corner, we braked very deep into the corner, because if I’d braked early he would have come down the outside. We went in very deep but I still made the corner on the same normal line that I would do normally. He was in my blind spot… Well I can see actually quite far behind me, I knew that he was behind, so then I continued my line.
“I thought for sure there would be an investigation. I’m mostly disappointed for the team, of course for myself because I lose points, and that makes my championship a lot harder. Coming into this weekend the team – I don’t know why because we were already racing hard with each other – but they said we want you to be able to race. I don’t know how literal he took that differently, because for me the priority was still for the team to finish.
“You can ask Fernando and all drivers, when a car is less than half a car length alongside you, and you’re in the inside, it’s your racing line. It’s not your job to go massively out of your way to leave extra room. And it wasn’t one of those corners where there’s a wall there or anything.”
Adam Cooper's F1 Blog 
There’s a difference between hitting someone on purpose and purposely not getting out of someone’s way. Lewis came across the track & Nico didn’t leap out of the way. The stewards called it right by doing nothing. Mercedes are understandably annoyed at a 1 – 2 lost but Lewis is mischief making now with these comments.
Lewis came across the track? Are you retarded or a Nico Rosberg in disguise? Lewis took the natural line and he was ahead of Rosberg at the time. Nico thinks he is capable of taking on Lewis in a straight up battle and what today and the past 12 races have shown is that Nico will NEVER be an elite racer. Nico Rosberg should be more concerned with passing drivers on the track rather than waiting for the team to give him free overtakes. His main issue at Hungary was the fact he could not pass Jean Eric Vergne whereas Lewis passed the frenchman on his first attempt and he made it stick. Nico then expects his teammate to do him a favour by allowing him to drive past without any hassle lol. Nico proved again today that he is not able to pass drivers when it really matters and if he hadn’t been stuck behind Vettle like a numpty and then getting overtook by Bottas lol, he may have won the race.
What was on purpose? What was to prove a point?
Trying to pass?
The choice of line?
Backing out of the pass?
Making contact?
Not cutting the corner to avoid contact?
There’s a lot of ambiguity in what’s being claimed and quoted, the meaning of “it” being suggestive but not specified. We need to know more and we probably won’t for a few days.
Personally, I saw it as a no-blame racing incident, unless further evidence shows otherwise.
Lewis likes to steer s*** like this and inject hostility towards his teammate. He did it with Alonso in 2007 too. He’s always playing innocent, naive guy, but he knew exactly what he was doing.
What Nico did to prove a point was not to back out of the way, because Lewis was always using crash-or-yield tactic to bully Nico into backing out of the move. Now Nico made sure he stuck through it and now Lewis will have to think twice before trying the same thing again. Lewis isn’t very intelligent guy and he shouldn’t be doing this mind games. But unfortunately, as 2007 proved, average viewer is buying it, so he keeps coming out with this kind of interviews.
Quite agree with you Brace, Lewis (The Winger) Hamilton has always tried to bully/intimidate all his team mates ;- Fernando, Jenson & now Nico plus any driver that gets in his way (Prime example is Massa).
Hamilton should stop winging, & get on with what he is paid to do, “Race”..
Lewis: “We have to finish for the team. The team has priority, always. Even if they say we can race, the team has priority”.
Team: “Lewis, let Nico by”.
Lewis: “No”.
1) I don’t believe Lewis ever said “no”, what he said was it would negatively affect his race to slow up by over a second to let Nico catch up so that he could then think about a pass. He was right.
2) It wasn’t a team order, more of “don’t hold Nico up”
2) Lewis had worked out, whilst driving that Nico could well catch him up on fresh tyres. He was absolutely correct. The team had not figured this out and later admitted that they had made a mistake and the call was misjudged. They even apologised to him.
Exactly: it would negatively impact his race…for the good of the team. Nico on 3-stopper, Lewis on 2-stopper. Strategic protocol: let the 3-stopper go. Team had shot at a 1-3. Instead, got a 3-4. Let’s be intellectually honest: there was no way Lewis was letting Nico pass and giving up those points. Which is fine — Lewis is a charger. But let’s not pretend otherwise.
ps- Nico was a naughty boy at Monaco and Spa.
Nico knew exactly what he was doing. He knew that by cutting Lewis’ tire that it would make him lose a lot of time and perhaps the race. Nico did this on purpose and should be banned one race because of it.
Maybe, maybe not, regarding Nico’s “intentional act”. There would be just as high a probability of damaging to his own tire or car, not to mention the extra time to replace the wing.
We tend to write essays on what is a split second timing decision, taken in the moment of competition.