Lauda backing for Hamilton

2008 Formula One World Champion Lewis Hamilton has received the backing of three-time former champion Niki Lauda.

Hamilton was under scrutiny from the worlds media for failing to comply with team-orders during the Hungarian Grand Prix.

During a frantic race weekend which had seen Hamilton forced to start the the race from the pit-lane after a fire in qualifying, Rosberg had then lost his dominant position in the race due to a safety car.

The Caterham of Marcus Ericsson had suffered a heavy crash on lap eight which brought out the safety car.

At this point of the race Rosberg had been 10 seconds clear in the lead of the race.

But it wasn’t just time on track that cost Rosberg, due to the timing that the safety car was deployed Rosberg missed out on the best chance of making his first pit-stop to ditch the wet intermediate tyres for dry slicks.

The rest of the field were able to pull into the pit-lane immediately and by the time Rosberg had pitted he had slipped down to fourth with Daniel Ricciardo leading.

Once Rosberg had then lost track time due to being stuck behind the Toro Rosso of Jean-Eric Vergne, Mercedes opted to pit Rosberg and put him on the faster softer Pirelli tyre.

On lap 46 of 70 Rosberg caught up to the back of team-mate Hamilton.

The Mercedes duo were on different tyre strategies with Hamilton attempting to race Ricciardo and Alonso until the end of the Grand Prix on the same set of tyres, whilst Rosberg was set to pit again.

With Rosberg 1 second behind Hamilton at the start of lap 47, the Brit was informed to not hold up his faster team-mate.

One lap later and Hamilton was querying whether or not his old tyres would make it until the end of the race and posing the question whether or not he would have to pit again, this was immediately dismissed by his team.

On the start of lap 51 with Rosberg unable to close the gap to within a second and Hamilton closing the gap to Alonso, Rosberg asked ‘why is he not letting me though?’

At this point Mercedes told Hamilton ‘to let Nico past on the main start finish straight’ with Hamilton responding with ‘I’m not slowing down for Nico, get closer and he can over-take.’

A frustrated Rosberg again asked ‘why is he not letting me through!’ with his engineer just reply with ‘he’s had the message’.

With Rosberg unable to catch Hamilton let alone get close to enable Hamilton to let him through Rosberg pitted on lap 57.

The decision left Rosberg confused.

‘The team informed that he was going to let me through but I don’t know what happened. We need to discuss internally. But I am still in the lead of the World Championship and I’ll come back from the summer break on full attack mode,’ Rosberg told Sky Sports.

But if he thought he would receiving the backing of the team the German was wrong.

Mercedes non-executive chairman Niki Lauda told Autosport Magazine: ‘I have to defend the team, The team was under enormous stress because the race was a very difficult one, there is no question.

‘If he [Nico] had been in the DRS position, he would have let him by. But Nico never got that close.

‘Therefore I do understand that Lewis said ‘Why? Why should I stop now in the middle of the circuit to let my team colleague by?’ He is fighting for the championship.

‘So from my point of view Lewis was right. And why the call came, this happened out of the panic and we had to make up for what we were losing.’