Lewis Hamilton admits Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg deserved podium finish

A contrite Lewis Hamilton refused to actively celebrate his first podium finish for Mercedes after admitting team-mate Nico Rosberg would have finished third at the Malaysian GP had it not been for team orders.

In a relatively light-hearted moment earlier in the race given what went afterwards, Hamilton also admitted he didn't quite know how he ended up pulling into his old team McLaren's pit box. "I just did a Jenson; he did that a couple of years ago!" Hamilton said. "I'm used to that for so many years, driving into the McLaren pitstop, but I don't know how I got it wrong. Apologies to my team." Although Rosberg had appeared agitated in the heat of the battle, by the time he spoke to Natalie Pinkham after the race, the German appeared to have calmed down. While highlighting the importance of the overall result for Mercedes, Rosberg also expressed confidence that if the roles had been reversed, he would have been allowed to stay ahead. "It's nice to hear if he really did say that. That's the way it is; fair play from me today as a team effort and I respect the team's opinion," he said. "It's an important day for us - that's for sure. We've had such a tough time in the last year's, even Melbourne, so to be third and fourth fighting the Red Bulls is a milestone and we need to put in some consistency. "So to bring it home in third and fourth is fully understandable and I know if it would have been the other way round they would have done the same thing. So that's okay and for sure there will be time to fight between team-mates in the future."