Nico Rosberg’s brakes were “in danger” during the first part of the Canadian Grand Prix, according to Toto Wolff.

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With Lewis Hamilton leading, Rosberg was told to try and protect his brakes as he followed his team-mate due to rising temperatures. Rosberg continued to do so for a number of laps after his pit stop despite closing to within a second of Hamilton, and Wolff admits there was a spell of the race where the brakes were critical.

“Nico’s brakes were in danger after the first third of the race at very high temperatures,” Wolff said. “It was a very clear message we passed on to look after those brakes. I would say that in that particular race the brakes were the bigger problem than the fuel.”

And Wolff says the brakes were a limiting factor which prevented Rosberg mounting a bigger challenge to Hamilton late on.

“Brakes were always an issue. We wanted to help to manage the brakes so that the two of them could race each other with ten laps to the end.

“We gave them the call that brakes were looking okay and I think Nico realised that when he was pushing towards the end of the race that he missed the braking once and, with it being so difficult to overtake here, he probably realised it was going to be very hard to overtake unless Lewis made a mistake.”

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