Rosberg accuses Hamilton of slowing him down in Chinese GP

Nico Rosberg has reignited his feud with Lewis Hamilton by accusing his Mercedes teammate of slowing him down during the Chinese GP.

Rosberg trailed the race winner Hamilton throughout the event but believed his second place was jeopardised before the second round of pit-stops when Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel began to close in on his car.

Despite crossing the line behind Hamilton to secure a one-two podium finish for Mercedes, an angry Rosberg hit out at Hamilton in a post-race press conference.

With Hamilton sitting alongside him, Rosberg accused Hamilton of "unnecessarily compromising my race" by "driving slower than was necessary."

"It's interesting to hear from you Lewis that you were just thinking about yourself with the pace. Unnecessarily that was compromising my race, because driving slower than was maybe necessary at the beginning of stints meant that Sebastian was very close to me and that opening up the opportunity for Sebastian to try that early pit stop, to try and jump me," Rosberg was quoted as saying by skysports.com on Sunday.

"I was unnecessarily close to Sebastian as a result and it cost me race time as a result."

Asked to respond Hamilton replied: "It's not my job to look after Nico's race. My job is to manage to car and bring the car home as fast as possible and that's what I did. I didn't do anything intentionally to slow the cars up."

Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel took the third spot in the race.