Rosberg backs his mate: "Lewis is not a liar"

Williams' Nico Rosberg has given his vote of support to his old friend and adversary Lewis Hamilton as the April 29th FIA hearing into McLaren and ...

Williams' Nico Rosberg has given his vote of support to his old friend and adversary Lewis Hamilton as the April 29th FIA hearing into McLaren and Hamilton lying to the stewards comes into view.

People are openly talking here in the Bahrain paddock about the possibility that McLaren may face a similar punishment to the one Honda received for it's fuel tank irregularity, namely a two race ban. This could include Spain and Monaco, if it were to come into immediate effect.

Rosberg said that he didn't know the details of the case but, as one of Hamilton's oldest friends in the paddock, was keen to stick up for his character.

“I feel for Lewis, it’s not a nice situation, " he said. "Lewis is not a liar, I know him very well and he’s a very honest person. It’s very unfortunate.”

Hamilton has again gone silent as far as the media is concerned. Angry about stories in the papers last weekend that he and the team had fallen out, he's keeping out of view, with only a brief appearance after practice tomorrow afternoon on his media schedule.

Meanwhile Rosberg reckons that the form book will return to how it was pre-Shanghai, with Brawn fastest, from Toyota, Red Bull and Williams with the rest behind. He says that Shanghai was an anomaly,

“You can neglect Shanghai completely. Everything was messed up. It wasn’t about how quick your car was it was about how well your car made the tyres work. Some cars for reasons that are nt known to any engineer in F1, made those tyres on that specific track.

"The cars don’t have to be better they just made the tyre work. Red Bull is the best example, they’ve always got the tyres working there and look at Buemi, he was in the top ten and he won’t be here.”

He accepted that Williams has so far not fully delivered results to match its pace

“Points wise we’re not where we deserve to be but not far off either, we are the third or fourth best team. It’s not gone that well, there have been some difficult races, we’ve made some mistakes as a team. Things will come our way again. This is a track which suits our car and the performance level will be similar to Malaysia.”