Nico Rosberg has criticised Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas for how they defended against Max Verstappen during the French Grand Prix, feeling neither did enough to resist the Dutchman’s attack.
Verstappen was switched to a two-stop strategy by Red Bull, which saw him sacrifice the lead of the race, before making a late charge to pass both Mercedes drivers and claim his third win of the season.
After forcing Bottas into a mistake to snatch second place, Verstappen chased down Hamilton before diving down his inside at the Turn 8 chicane on the penultimate lap.
Rosberg, who was working as a pundit for Sky Sports F1, believed Hamilton and Bottas didn’t make Verstappen work hard enough for the position.
The 2016 Formula 1 world champion went on to label Bottas’ attempt to hold Verstappen back as “rubbish”, and called Hamilton’s defence “a bit soft”.
“Valtteri did a rubbish job in defending because he blocked completely unnecessarily, he braked way too late, went straight on, so Max had such an easy time getting past,” Rosberg said.
“Maybe he would have got past anyways, but at least cost him a bit more effort. It was not a very good way of defending and could have been done in a much more smart way.”
Speaking about Hamilton’s efforts to hold off Verstappen, Rosberg added: “Close the damn door, no?
“Usually, Lewis is the best one-to-one racer and I’m surprised he didn’t try. At least try, brake late and try to keep him on the outside. A bit soft from Lewis, somehow.”
Asked to respond to Rosberg’s comments in the post-race press conference, Hamilton stressed it was “pointless” in trying to defend harder against Verstappen given his lack of grip.
“Firstly there’s marbles on the inside, so I didn’t want to make my tyres any worse than they already were,” Hamilton said, as quoted by Crash.net.
“He had the DRS open, if he didn’t pass me there he would have passed me on the straight afterwards so it made zero difference. And I had no front end so he would have got me either way, so it was pointless to defend any harder.
“I think you saw what happened with Valtteri, just ended up going straight on, so there’s no point messing up the tyres any more.”
Comments.
Loading comments…