Rosberg explains Hamilton criticism

Nico Rosberg has given more details about why he accused Lewis Hamilton of slowing him during the Chinese Grand Prix, saying he was priming himself for an attack on his Mercedes team-mate in the closing stages.

An irate Rosberg expressed his frustration over what he felt was Hamilton deliberately backing him up into Sebastian Vettel during the second stint of the Chinese Grand Prix, though the defending champion denied it was intentional.

Though Mercedes moved to play down the spat after thrashing out opinions over a debrief, Rosberg, responding to Twitter questions in his video blog, attempts to explain why he wanted Hamilton to up the pace to take him away from Vettel.

"Why didn't l attack? I can understand why you are asking that because it's maybe not so easy to understand from outside. The reason is, I did try to attack him during the first stint and it just didn't work, all l did was destroy my tyres.

"So in the second stint there was no point doing that again because Vettel was right behind and it would have really risked my second place if l had tried that as l would have just ruined my tyres completely again and Vettel would have had a really good shot at overtaking me.

"My only chance to win the race, or to fight Lewis or to try to overtake him, would have come at the end of the race and that's what I was building up to."

"It [the debrief] was very intense after the race but we had a very good sit-down and a good discussion. There was a lot of constructive criticism and now for everyone it is a thing of the past. We move on to Bahrain."

Rosberg also responded to a question asking why he was 'crying' after the race, with Rosberg vowing to show 'respect', albeit only when it is due.

"You said I was crying? I respect your opinion. I'll keep it in mind and try to show respect when it is due," he added.