1. Nico Rosberg, just like Toto Wolff, is a businessman. Most of the time, what they say is influenced by their own interests, and Nico has had a financial interest in ANT’s success for years.
2. If ANT truly had the pace advantage over RUS, he would have passed him much earlier. Instead, it took him more than 30 laps just to get close, and he still couldn’t get by on track. By lap 28, he had already exceeded track limits four times, and investigations later showed that several additional track limit violations had been removed from the FIA record. On pure pace, he was never realistically going to catch Hamilton either.
3. Mercedes compromised RUS’s race through both strategy and car performance. They kept him uninformed about the strategic picture in order to help ANT close the gap, which is why RUS spent the first stint managing his tyres. Then, after switching to the hard tyre, he was forced to continue with a damaged front wing. That is the real reason ANT was eventually able to get past him.