SHANGHAI // Nico Rosberg, the world championship leader, said that his Mercedes team were to sit down and clear the air between him and Lewis Hamilton after their battle in Bahrain.
Hamilton held off his clearly quicker teammate over the final few laps to win his second race after a dramatic duel, during which Rosberg complained over the radio, “That’s not on.”
Rosberg conceded to reporters that it had "taken a while" to get over finishing second to Hamilton. But his focus has now turned to the Chinese Grand Prix.
“It was an enjoyable fight, during the race, anyway,” said Rosberg, who scored his first victory in China, two years ago.
Rosberg’s outburst came after the pair came “so close I couldn’t have got my hand between the two wheels”, the German said.
He said they would iron out any differences during the team meeting.
“It’s completely normal that, as a team, when there are races when a lot has happened that you’re going to go and sit down and discuss,” he said. “That’s very, very important to move forward. And we will do that.
“We will make sure everyone knows the different opinions, we will review to be able to put it completely behind us. It’s natural and needs to happen to move forward and be even stronger.”
Rosberg and Hamilton are no strangers to on-track battles, going back to their karting days as teenagers.
“There have been so many occasions,” Rosberg said.
“Even when we were 12 or 13 years old. And there have been intense discussions afterwards. But we always race with the necessary respect and then move on afterwards.”
Hamilton, the victor in Bahrain and Malaysia, said that it been “quite an exciting race” and that he watched it again on video.
“It was a bit more like a go-kart race. A great race, I hope there are more races like that during the year,” he said.
“You don’t see it too often.”
But Hamilton cautioned that people shouldn’t think that everything was now right with the new-look Formula One after one exciting race, which followed two Mercedes parades in Australia and Malaysia.
“That’s the thing in this sport. You have one good day and it changes opinion,” he said. “It does show that there are some good things about, but there are still some things to improve.”
Meanwhile, Daniel Ricciardo said he was not counting on having his vacated second-place finish in the Australian Grand Prix reinstated on appeal to the governing body FIA and insisted he had “moved on” from the failed bid.
The Red Bull driver was stripped of the 18 points he would have scored for crossing the line second in Melbourne, his first podium finish, over a FIA fuel-flow violation.
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