Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has moved quickly to defuse tension in the camp in China after Nico Rosberg accused Lewis Hamilton of making his life difficult by backing him up and allowing Sebastian Vettel to stay on his tail.
Wolff said that after the matter was discussed in a team meeting the drivers understood the situation more clearly.
“It was a good debrief, because it was a positive debrief,” he said. “There wasn’t any animosity. There is much more positive today. We didn’t do any mistake in the race. Everybody was in good spirits.”
Wolff insisted that the main issue was that Hamilton wasn’t sure how the option tyres would play out over the second stint, and thus in effect kept something in reserve. The team had planned to put the prime on at the first stop, but the strategy was changed.
“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.
“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. And on the same time Sebastian was increasing the pace behind him. So understandable from both of them.”
Wolff was adamant that Lewis had not tried to handicap his team mate.
“I think he didn’t do it on purpose, and we’ve cleared that now. There wasn’t any intention from Lewis to slow Nico down in order to make him finish third or worse, one hundred per cent. 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.
“Now after a while we realised after a while that this was putting us into trouble, putting Nico into trouble, risking the second place – or even worse, if Lewis has a DNF you could potentially lose the race as Mercedes, so there were lots of thoughts on the pit wall about the possible consequences. And he didn’t know that. So I think you can’t really blame anybody.
“You cannot take the DNA off a racing driver and expect him not to look after himself, which he did. Whether it was in the back of his mind, and he saw the Ferraris in the mirrors, and he thought that was interesting… But I don’t really think that was the case. He didn’t know how long the tyres would last, and this is why he decided to manage the gap the way he did. When we came on the radio it was the moment to act. Then he increased the pace, and as a remedy we pitted Nico first, which normally we wouldn’t have done, to take him out of trouble.”
Adam Cooper's F1 Blog 
A very logical and straightforward explanation. Nico needs to shut up and drive the wheels off the car. Someone else mentioned Nico is mindf**ked. Becomes more apparent with every whine he mutters.
re: whining
Maybe he’s cleverly auditioning for a Red Bull seat.
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Amen to that!
All of this stems from Spa.
Has any other team ever fined a driver $100,000 for leaving his car’s nose inside his teammate? Has any other team ever so publicly castigated one of its drivers?
Nico hasn’t been the same since and is now a pale shadow of his former self.
Hamilton’s confidence grows with each session and race. He made a mistake in his final qualifying run, but it didn’t matter. That takes all the pressure off Hamilton and puts it back on Rosberg.
Hamilton will coast this title.
First, I think you’re ignoring Brazil, and secondly, Rosberg’s fine wasn’t for hitting Hamilton– It was for being stupid enough to say “I could have avoided it, but I chose not to”. The fact that it was true was irrelevant. He said it, and that was dumb.
Nico is a very fast driver– and a very good one. If his teammate in 2014 had been anyone on the grid besides Alonso, Hamilton or Vettel, Rosberg would have won the championship. Unfortunately, Rosberg was paired with one of the very few drivers who knows how to out-race him.
or Ricciardo, Massa, or Button. Or Raikkonen. Or. . . Verstappen, Sainz or Nasr this year. I think anyone in a Mercedes would have made Rosberg’s life hard. He’s a fast lapper in clear air and that’s all he is.
lets not forget when cry baby Nico was moaning about being held up by Lewis he was 2.4 seconds behind firstly he could have just speeded up as he had at least another second to close in on Lewis before tyre deg started increasing and secondly I am also certain if Lewis had seen Nico closing in he would have increased his speed to offset any increase in Nico’s speed but in fact as we saw as soon as Lewis increased his speed Nico lost ground clearly showing no extra speed available from Nico just an excuse for a spoilt brat for his being outclassed on the track by his teammate and now showing he is being outclassed off it too
Races seem to be, at least so far anyway, won in the first corner, or the pits. On track has been very boring at the front.
With a rare exception here and there, it’s been that way for years, hasn’t it?
What Mercedes’ needs is a pliable, obedient, respectably quick designated number 2 driver, instead of a competitive, aggressive racer who has to be neutered into submission. And that’s what seems to have happened to Nico.