Nico Rosberg claims Mercedes are not being truthful to Lewis Hamilton

Nico Rosberg has claimed that Mercedes were being untruthful to Sir Lewis Hamilton after his awful showing at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix on Sunday.

The seven-time world champion had one of his worst weekends of his Formula 1 career at the Imola Circuit, qualifying way down the order, losing a place in the sprint race, before finally coming home a woeful 13th after getting stuck behind Pierre Gasly’s AlphaTauri for the majority of the race.

Mercedes’ W13 car has proven to be extremely difficult to drive and is way off the pace of main rivals Ferrari and Red Bull, and even before the race Hamilton confessed that he was in no position to fight for the 2022 title.

As he reached the chequered flag, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff apologised to Hamilton for his car’s performance, telling him: ‘Sorry for what you have needed to drive today.

‘I know this is undriveable and not what we deserve to score as a result. We’ll move from there, but this was a terrible race. We will come out of this.’

However, Rosberg, Hamilton’s teammate at the Silver Arrows from 2013 to 2016, thinks this was just a ploy to keep the Brit’s spirits up.

Speaking on Sky Sports, the 2016 world champion said: ‘Toto was playing the mental game, which is very smart on his behalf.

‘[Mercedes are] taking the blame themselves, really trying to support Lewis mentally, lifting him up and saying, “Hey, Lewis, it’s not your doing, it’s really on us”. That’s very smart because it’s not quite the truth.

‘Let’s not forget [George] Russell is in P4 with that same car, so Lewis definitely had a big role to play in that poor result this weekend.

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