Rosberg admits to error at Sepang start

Rosberg and Webber had secured the second row of the grid but, after the German made a poor start, his move to block Webber left plenty of room for Fernando Alonso to get past the pair of them around of the outside of the first corner.

That action left Webber pretty unimpressed, and Rosberg has now accepted that he was wrong to have been so aggressive against his teammate.

"I didn't have such a good start in the race in Sepang and made a bit of a mistake, probably because of concentrating too much on Mark," he said in his official column for team sponsor Castrol.

"I thought he was the only guy I was fighting with into the first corner and in the end it hurt both of us as Alonso went past the two of us in one go.

"It was my fault as I was trying to put pressure on Mark and push him onto the dirty side of the track to stop him getting by. It was just like he was any other driver because the team said: 'as long as you don't take each other off, then you are free to race.'

"But in the end I should have accepted that Mark was there and we should have worked together and made sure that we got through the corner without anybody else passing us.

"I will change that for the future. Mark and I have spoken and we can work on that together."