Toto Wolff has revealed that Mercedes had pre-race discussions about the contentious situation that emerged between its two drivers at the Chinese Grand Prix, but still argues Hamilton did not step over the line.
In the post-race press conference, Rosberg turned to Hamilton and accused him of compromising Mercedes' chances of a one-two victory. The crux of the issue centred around the second stint, when race leader Hamilton dropped his pace to protect his tyres but in doing so backed Rosberg into Sebastian Vettel in third.
"We were discussing that scenario precisely this morning," Wolff said after the race. "Running through the options it was clearly a possibility that we would end up in such a situation, Vettel being close to the second driver and how would we respond and what would be the primary target."
Asked if a plan was put in place for such a scenario, Wolff said: "Yes, it was to follow our guidance and instruction of what the pace should be and let's say he [Hamilton] wasn't far off from what he was told."
Wolff believes Hamilton did not compromise Rosberg's race deliberately, saying Mercedes were wary of how long the soft tyre would last.
"He didn't do on purpose, we've cleared that now. There wasn't any intention from Lewis to slow Nico down to make him finish third or worse - 100%. He didn't know the gaps behind Nico, but what he knew was we needed to take that [soft] tyre longer than we had taken it all weekend. This is why he decided to slow down in the way he did.
"After a while we realised as a team this was putting us into trouble and putting Nico into trouble and risking the second place or worse if Lewis has a DNF because we could potentially lose the race [to Ferrari]. There were lots of thoughts on the pit wall about the possible consequences and he didn't know that."
And Wolff insists the air was cleared between the drivers during the team's post-race debrief.
"It was a good debrief and a positive debrief. There wasn't any animosity and we took if offline also, but there was much more positive today because we didn't do any mistakes in the race. I know what you want to hear, but generally everybody was in good spirits."