F1 – Hamilton and Rosberg Crash – Video

 

Apparently, when Rosberg was pressing his overtake button, Lewis was already coming up on the inside and the rest is history. Was Lewis too aggressive in trying to take advantage of his teammate being considerably slower on that section of the track? Certain people, such as Niki Lauda himself seem to think so. Others, however, are calling this Rosberg’s fault for not paying enough attention, while F1 officials are simply calling it a racing incident.

“I was aware of the situation, I saw Lewis coming closer so I went for the usual racing driver action of closing the door as early as I could,” said Rosberg. “I was making it clear I wasn’t leaving any space, so I was very surprised that he went for the gap anyway. The stewards decided it was a race incident, so we will accept that – we will leave it at that.”

Hamilton was a bit more courteous to his team and remorseful for technically being the one that initiated the contact between the two Mercedes cars.

“First of all, a huge apology to all of our team – when I stopped my heart just sank. To not deliver for them, it’s honestly…indescribable how gutted I was,” said the British driver. “I got a good start but he [Rosberg] slipstreamed me into Turn 1. Then through Turn 3 he had a de-rate – basically he made a mistake and started in the wrong engine setting. We only have one setting for maximum power and he wasn’t in it, which meant he was like 180 BHP down. I’m not getting into blame, just a huge apology to the team. I’ll do everything I can to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Don’t have a good feeling this second, but we will recover.”