Rosberg's bad luck came all at once - Wolff

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Mercedes boss Toto Wolff says Nico Rosberg's bad luck came all in one race resulting in his seventh place at the Monaco Grand Prix.

Lewis Hamilton took an impressive victory on Sunday after a Red Bull pit stop error cost Daniel Ricciardo, but Hamilton was only in position to capitalise after his Mercedes team-mate let him through early on. Wolff says a number of factors contributed to Rosberg's poor result which aw his championship lead slashed to 24 points.

“For him it was a messy day," Wolff said. "Not only did he let his team-mate past who is his biggest rival for the championship, he also had a scrappy pit stop and a car that didn’t have any pace. So for him all the bad luck came in one race and this is why he only finished seventh.

"This is the difficulty of what we have. I am extremely delighted and extremely happy for Lewis having won the race in that manner that was just at the right moment, but equally after such a bad race for Nico I am always in two minds, mixed emotions.”

Rosberg's problems follow a number of reliability issues for Mercedes, and Wolff says he expects post-race analysis to show a clear reason why the championship leader struggled for pace so much compared to his team-mate.

“Nico’s problem was much more severe than Lewis’s but still I believe that overall we need to look at the pace around Monaco and analyse. I am very curious to see after seeing all the summary of the data what actually happened.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.