Wolff praises Rosberg concession to Hamilton

Toto Wolff praised Nico Rosberg for allowing team-mate Lewis Hamilton to pass him and go on to win the Monaco Grand Prix.

Rosberg was struggling with his tyres in the opening stint of the race, allowing Daniel Ricciardo to open up a 13-second lead before the first round of pits stops. As a result, Mercedes asked Rosberg to let the faster Hamilton through and the championship leader duly obliged, with Hamilton going on to pull a four-second gap over his team-mate by the end of the lap.

Explaining the decision to enforce team orders, Wolff praised Rosberg's willingness to do so without question.

“Somehow over the weekend we have just struggled to switch the tyres on," Wolff said. "We weren’t able to put them in the right window and it looked like at the beginning that we were suffering the same and Ricciardo was just pulling away.

"Nico couldn’t do that and the reason being, what we believe was that tyre temperature and the way that Ricciardo was pulling away it was clear that not reversing the situation between Nico and Lewis would definitely lose us the race.

"We waited for quite a while, gave him more laps for the tyres to come in but they didn’t and then finally we decided to call it because the pace was just so much slower and it proved to be the right decision.

"One thing which is maybe good to say immediately if I would have Niki’s red cap I would take it off because in such a difficult circumstance to give up the position and understand the situation it was really great from Nico.”

And Wolff said Rosberg did not need convincing once asked to move over.

“Not one single question. First we told him to pick up the pace if he would be capable of doing that or if not then to let Lewis by. A lap later we gave him the call of just letting him by and he did that immediately.”