Nico Rosberg directly criticised Lewis Hamilton for backing him up in to Sebastian Vettel during the Chinese Grand Prix, saying he believes it was done on purpose.
Hamilton was asked in the post race press conference what he thought of radio messages from Rosberg and Mercedes asking him to speed up as Vettel closed in on the second Mercedes, to which Hamilton replied: "I wasn't controlling his race, I was controlling my own race".
When Rosberg was then asked for his view on Hamilton's pace in the middle stint, he hit back at his team-mate.
"It's just now 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. Driving slower than was maybe 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.
"So first of all 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."
Hamilton was then asked if he would like to respond, to which he replied: "Not really.
"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. 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."
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