Nico Rosberg pulls no punches on Ferrari clash: “It’s always Charles’ fault”

Nico Rosberg has urged the Ferrari Formula 1 team to take action after Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc’s first-lap clash at the Mexico City Grand Prix. 

Hamilton and Leclerc battled for the lead during the first four corners of Sunday’s race at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in a feisty duel that saw Leclerc cut a chicane to take the position from his team-mate. 

Seven-time world champion Hamilton also ran wide at Turn 4 as Leclerc swept by and slipped behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, who went on to beat him to victory. 

The Ferrari drivers pointed the finger at each other after the race with Hamilton blaming Leclerc for costing the team a potential one-two finish. Hamilton called for “serious talks” at Ferrari and insisted further scraps are inevitable in the future if nothing is done. 

Sharing his take on the opening lap duel, Rosberg said he believes Leclerc was in the wrong. 

“Interestingly, it’s always Charles’ fault, isn’t it? It’s never Lewis’s fault. In the last couple of times, in Monza it was Charles, here it was Charles,” the 2016 world champion told Sky Sports F1. 

Rosberg, who has first hand experience of battling Hamilton within an intra-team situation from their time together at Mercedes, called on Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur to lay down some rules of engagement. 

“Really Fred Vasseur, he needs to start to act,” Rosberg added. 

“Once again, as Lewis said before the race, there was no discussion. Like clear racing guidelines between the two. It needs to happen, otherwise it’s going to keep going like this. 

“It gets really bad when the drivers take it in their own hands and disregard whatever has been discussed and just take it in their own hands and sort it out on track and barge the other guy out the way. That can very quickly happen and it’s already kind of happening.

“On the first wheel-to-wheel that they had at Turns 2 and 3, Charles was bouncing over the kerb into Lewis, he was not holding the line. So already that was too much from Charles.”