Rosberg penalty was 'nonsense', insists Wolff

Toto Wolff has complained that the ten-second penalty handed to Nico Rosberg for contact with Kimi Raikkonen during the Malaysian Grand Prix was 'nonsense' and ran counter to the policy that the teams and FIA had agreed governing how such incidents would be managed.

"A couple of months ago we decided all together that we wanted to allow the racing between all the cars and if it wasn’t 100 per cent clear that someone was at fault then we would let them race against each other - and then this.

"The penalty is just complete nonsense.

"I don’t know, it is for others to comment and not my main priority after that race today," he added.

"It’s not what I want to focus on because we have let Lewis down today and that should be something that we are beating up ourselves [over] and not moan about an unfair penalty that didn’t make any difference because Nico was still third."

Wolff added that Rosberg was fortunate even to be in the race at that stage, given his first lap collision with Raikkonen's Ferrari team mate Sebastian Vettel going through turn 1 at Sepang.

"Nico was the victim of Sebastian trying it on the inside and was, in the same way as being unlucky by being spun around, he was also lucky that the car didn’t have any damage. He did a brilliant drive to recover back to third, made no mistakes and there is nothing negative to say."

Rosberg himself wasn't about to dwell on the penalty, given that he was able to build up enough of a gap over the car behind to ensure he finished on the podium despite carrying damage from the contact.

"I accept it, and I’m fortunate that it didn’t cost me a position in the race, of course. I had to give it everything lap after lap again in the end there to re-gap that 10 seconds to make sure we had a 10 second gap."

"The steering took an off-set so maybe the tow or something on the rear, but I don’t know the impact," he added. "The first one was the big one. Got torpedoed by a four-time world champion!

"At the same time [I had to] save the engine because of Lewis’s problem. We were a bit hesitant to run it all-out until the end."

FULL REPORT: Ricciardo wins in Malaysia as Hamilton retires from lead

Breakfast with... Gianni Morbidelli

Silbermann says ... Bugged by Liberty

Romain Grosjean exclusive column: Haas can build momentum for 2017

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter