Hamilton ‘working the longest hours’ - Rosberg

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Nico Rosberg says team-mate Lewis Hamilton has been working noticeably harder in order to try to close the gap in the drivers’ championship.

Hamilton was eight points adrift of Rosberg following the Singapore Grand Prix but looked set to overturn the deficit when he retired from the lead in Malaysia. It was Hamilton’s off-track behaviour which caused headlines in Japan as he refused to take questions from the media in his Saturday evening media session following criticism from some quarters of his approach to the Thursday FIA Press Conference.

Having comfortably won the Japanese Grand Prix, when asked if the off-track distractions may have played a part in Hamilton’s performance as he finished third, Rosberg said he has seen the defending champion increase his work rate.

“First of all I don’t know any of these things because I don’t see them during a race weekend and I don’t know what is going on, but I can tell you that behind the scenes he’s been as focused as ever, which he always is and especially after a setback like Malaysia.

“He was working the longest hours I have seen him work in many months trying to get the little extra bit of lap time. I’ve seen him extremely motivated and focused.”

And Rosberg says he himself is unaware of what has caused Hamilton’s behaviour to be scrutinised.

“I haven’t seen any self-destruction and the Lewis I saw was massively motivated and focused. I don’t see his Lewis’ media, I know what I’m doing on a race weekend and after…”

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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.