- Mercedes
Trusting Rosberg difficult now - Hamilton
Lewis Hamilton says he will be wary of duelling with Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg in future after the pair collided at the Belgian Grand Prix.
Hamilton suffered a puncture on the second lap in Spa after Rosberg, who he had passed at the first corner, made contact with his left rear tyre at Les Combes. After the race it emerged Rosberg had told Hamilton and Mercedes senior management at the post-race debrief he had refused to pull out despite knowing contact was inevitable, something Hamilton says will linger in his mind for the rest of the season.
"Well, when you're out there you have to trust the people to think with their heads and don't do things deliberately," Hamilton said when asked whether he could trust Rosberg going forward. "I asked that question because I'd been told our job and what we'd been told to do is finish for the team. The team is the priority, always - even if they say we can race, the team is the priority. It doesn't mean we can go out there and crash into each other. I thought it was going to be a good day, either way."
Hamilton does not think he deserves any blame for the collision as he was in front and on the racing line through Les Combes.
"He said it was my fault and that he could have avoided it. But he didn't want to. If it was the other way round, we know - and you can ask Fernando [Alonso], you can ask all the drivers - when a car is less than half a car length alongside you and you're on the inside, it's your racing line. It's not your job to go massively out your way to leave extra, extra room. And it's not as though there's a wall; look at Sebastian [Vettel] the lap before. He was actually further up. And he knew he wasn't going to go up the outside, he was sensible about it."
When it was put to him again if he could trust Rosberg in a wheel-to-wheel situation in Monza, Hamilton replied: "I'll just make sure we're not wheel-to-wheel. I don't really know how to approach the next race, but all I know is that I've got to push, I've got a long way to come back from it."
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