Originally Posted by Assa2:
“Martin Brundle voiced an interesting theory after the race, namely that Bernie asked Mercedes to 'go slow' and allow Ferrari to stay close behind and make it seem like a much closer race than it otherwise would have been. He suggested that the Mercs' lap times throughout the weekend, especially Hamilton's blast at the end of the second stint, strongly suggested they had a lot of performance in reserve and Rosberg's outburst supports this theory (although it would mean the team only told Lewis, or only instructed him to manage the pace). Brundle seems to have seen that Bernie spent a lot of time this weekend talking to Toto Wolf & Arrivabene and has put 2 and 2 together... however I think he's come up with 5. Yes I think Mercedes were very conservative with their pace on Sunday but I don't think they would have known how good they were going to be on the tyres based on Friday/Saturday.
Mercedes clearly still have a second plus of raw pace over everyone else but Ferrari have a chassis which is kind enough on the tyres to make up some of that over a race distance. How much is dependent on the track and conditions.”
I think Mr Brundle is spot on.
It explains entirely Mr Rosbergs "outburst".
That Mercedes setup allowed for substantially better performance than what we saw, which was a controlled laptime that kept the third place car never too far behind. Of course controlling the race in this way absolutely requires that the drivers don't race each other otherwise there would be no control as the speed of the cars increase. Rosbergs comments and behaviour on track show he must have been following these team orders, it simply does not make sense (I hear the argument that Rosberg could not get too close because running so close to Hamilton's affects his own overall performance (tires), but I wave this argument away with a wave of the hand, which is more than the point of view deserves).
The instructions would be clear and along the lines of
1) The leader controls the race speed to make sure that there "gap" between him and the next NON Mercedes is within a specified window.
2) If another Mercedes car is in second he must not attempt to race and therefore stay JUST outside of DRS.
3) In the case of a Mercedes "one two", the leader must be aware of the gap between his team mate and the third place car.
It would appear that all went to plan apart from the third condition (in my suggested example), whether Hamilton did it deliberately I don't know. I suspect he did NOT.
I suppose I am obliged to explain the Malaysian result. I can't bring myself to believe the rumours (at the time) that Ferrari was "allowed" to win. Instead I did think that the setup of the Mercedes in THAT race had been set to mechanically reduce its performance to make Ferrari seem more competitive than it was. I think it went wrong and China relied on the drivers to control the race.
I would like to set myself apart from other Conspiracy Theorists by acknowledging that my opinion is not fact, but I do strongly believe that the only explanation of Rosbergs comments and position in the race was it was scripted.
EDIT; Scripted not to affected the winner, but to make it a "better" race and a better series to watch.