Wolff: 'We nearly peed our pants at the end!'

Toto Wolff admits Mercedes was feeling the tension as Daniel Ricciardo hunted down Nico Rosberg in the closing laps of the Singapore Grand Prix.

With Lewis Hamilton pitting from fourth place to undercut Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari responded and in turn forced Ricciardo to pit from second place. Rosberg was then told to push as Mercedes prepared to pit the race leader, but traffic on his in lap was going to leave him under threat from Ricciardo and the German had to stay out on soft tyres to the end of the race.

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With Ricciardo rapidly closing the gap to eventually finish 0.4s behind Rosberg at the chequered flag, Wolff admits Mercedes was relieved to hold off the Red Bull.

“Yeah we nearly peed our pants at the end!" Wolff said. "It was so close and how it should be in Formula One. Four really quick cars, different strategies and I must really take my hat off to Red Bull as well, they pulled off a great strategy at the end. We couldn’t do that because we would have lost the lead and Ricciardo out of the blocks with an amazing pace, it was really exciting at the end."

Asked why Mercedes didn't pit Rosberg, Wolff replied: “We lost the gap in that first lap.

"We were planning to pit and then Daniel put out a stunner and the gap shrank and was gone so we needed to just make it to the end.”

And Wolff acknowledges it was Mercedes' own strategy with Hamilton which inadvertently put Rosberg under pressure.

"At that moment we concentrated on getting Lewis back to third but equally I think that Ricciardo or Red Bull at that stage thought about pitting him. It was their only chance actually of making it ... we took Lewis out of the game and Raikkonen out of the game and gave them the possibility."

Breakfast with ... Bernd Maylander