Mercedes F1 boss Wolff: Hamilton wasn't trying to hamper Rosberg

Rosberg was furious after the race as he accused Hamilton of deliberately trying to back him up into Sebastian Vettel's Ferrari during the middle stint.

But following talks about the matter in the Sunday night post-race briefing, Wolff says the situation has been sorted and that Hamilton's actions were not underhand.

"It was a good debrief because it was a positive debrief," said Wolff. "There wasn't any animosity.

"There was much more positivity today with not doing any mistake in the race and I know what you want to hear, but generally everybody was in good spirits."

Rosberg accuses Hamilton of hampering his race

Wolff said that Hamilton's pace during that controversial second stint was dictated by concern about how long the option tyre would last.

"I think he didn't do it on purpose. We have cleared that now," said Wolff.

"There wasn't any intention from Lewis to slow Nico down in order to make him finish third or worse, 100 per cent.

"He didn't know the gaps behind Nico, what he knew was that he had to take that tyre longer than we have ever run it the whole weekend.

"This is why he decided to slow down in the way he did."

Rosberg and Hamilton argue in post-race press conference

The team boss said Mercedes had shared some of Rosberg's concerns during the race.

"We realised as a team that this was putting us into trouble, putting Nico into trouble, risking the second place or even worse," Wolff said.

"If Lewis has a DNF then you could potentially lose the race as Mercedes, so there was lots of talk on the pitwall of the possible consequences.

"He didn't know that. I think you cannot really blame anybody."

Wolff revealed that the team came close to intervening to ensure that Hamilton's pace did not compromise Rosberg in his battle with Vettel.

"It could have come to a point today where we would have been very firm on the radio, saying this is what needs to be done in order not to risk the race result.

"He [Hamilton] didn't do anything wrong, but we were close to having such a call, that the pace needs to go up now.

"It could come to a situation where you see we are risking the win against the Ferrari that we might do an unpopular call.

"We wouldn't freeze anything like this, because that is something we decided not to do, but it could be a situation where we need to manage them more."