Rosberg: I feel for Lewis he deserved to win

Nico Rosberg inherited victory at the Monaco Grand Prix when his Mercedes team made a glaring blunder by calling runaway leader Lewis Hamilton for a change of tyres during the race's only safety car period, and the German has admitted that his world champion teammate deserved the victory on the day.

After scoring a hat-trick of victories at the Principality, Rosberg said, "Lewis did a great job and deserved to win. I'm very well aware of that. I feel for him because it's such a horrible way to lose. On the other side a win is a win. Luck is such a big factor in sport."

"I have a lot of space for empathy towards Lewis because I know how horrible a day it is for him after such a strong weekend. To lose it like that, that really sucks, so I have a lot of capacity for that and I do feel that," added Rosberg.

He also admitted that he was confused when the safety car was out, and Hamilton rejoined from the pits, "I was like: where did he go? Then all of a sudden I see what I thought looked like wheels banging behind me between a Mercedes and a Ferrari and I was like: What the hell is going on there? Until I figured out."

Such was the pace of Hamilton throughout the weekend, that even when the race restarted with a handful of laps to go, Rosberg remained wary, "At the time I still thought Lewis would win because coming out on fresh super-softs, we were on stone-cold 40-lap-old whatever hard tyres which was going to be a massive mission to not hit the wall with, because it felt treacherous out there."

"I was sure he would win it, but the temperature came back quick and I could do some good lap times," explained Rosberg whose victory means he narrowed the gap in the points standings to ten - he arrived in Monaco with a 20 points deficit to Hamilton.