British GP: Nico Rosberg was prepared to let Lewis Hamilton win

The Formula 1 points leader retired from the lead of the race at Silverstone with a gearbox failure, handing victory to Hamilton and allowing the Briton to close to just four points behind his Mercedes team-mate in the title race.

Rosberg, who retired on lap 28 of 52, said the problem had been serious from lap 20, and before the gearbox failed he was considering conceding to Hamilton and focusing on keeping the car in the race.

"I somehow had hope," Rosberg told reporters after the race. "My mentality changed to 'let's stop racing Lewis and just try to get this thing to the end, somehow'.

"We had such a pace advantage that I can do some pretty radical things to keep this gearbox alive.

"But since it was mechanical there wasn't anything that could be done from our side."

While Hamilton was catching Rosberg before he retired, the championship leader felt he could hold him off before he struck trouble.

"I'm very confident I would have won the race," he added. "Things were going well until that point.

"We had a good balance, I felt comfortable. What can I say; it's just a reliability problem and a pity. That's it."

Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff praised Rosberg's approach towards dealing with the problem.

"Nico was facing disaster and retirement and he was very calm trying to go through the settings," he said.

"We really tried hard [to fix it]. A couple of times up to the time [it stopped] we were trying to reset the whole thing.

"In 2014 you wouldn't expect to have a DNF because of a gearbox breaking down.

"We have to analyse why. You can have such a DNF once but not twice."