After the first cracks in this year's team unity started to show at Mercedes, Maurice Hamilton looks at which of the British newspapers took the opportunity to stir the pot...
I don't know if Nico Rosberg plays golf or football but he ought to be grateful that both disciplines were dominating the British newspaper sports headlines on Monday morning. As it was, he took quite a pasting - but not as much as might have been expected, given that he was having a go at a Brit at the end of what had been an otherwise fairly dull race.
The Sun was the most damning. In a comparison with a boxing match, Ben Hunt described Rosberg as being "embarrassingly outclassed" and "swinging like a punch-drunk fighter", later referring to Rosberg's complaints as "childish attempts to sour Hamilton's win by calling him selfish". The Daily Mirror was on the second row of the grid compared to this, Byron Young's piece, tucked away on the inside without a back page teaser, reaching the dastardly height of referring to Rosberg as "furious".
The Daily Express questioned Rosberg's request to have Hamilton speed up rather than use "the natural racing driver's DNA of hunting the leader and trying to win the race", Gary Chappell going on to summarise the post-race spat with the germane comment: "Handbags indeed, but ones enjoyed by the smirking Vettel."
It was not until we moved to the Daily Mail that some form of balance appeared. In a typically wide-ranging piece, Jonathan McEvoy made the most pertinent observation of all the dailies by saying simply: "It was easy to sympathise with Rosberg but difficult to agree with him", before adding: "It seems, to this cod psychologist, that it was Rosberg's deep exasperation that led him to behave as he did". Incidentally, in his summary of the race, McEvoy was alone in placing Hamilton's fourth Shanghai victory in significant context by reminding the reader that this was where Lewis suffered arguably the greatest embarrassment of his career by sliding into the pit lane gravel trap in 2007.
The Times clearly sided with Hamilton, Ron Lewis asking the contentious question: "Is there a challenger to Hamilton this season? If there is, it will come from Ferrari, not his team-mate."
Daniel Johnson covered firmer ground in the Daily Telegraph with observations such as: "In truth, Rosberg had been in lousy mood all weekend. He cursed the team after missing out on pole by 0.04sec and his anger turned to Hamilton once the race was done", and summarising with: "It is Hamilton who holds all the cards. He is qualifying faster, racing better and is well in the ascendancy when it comes to mind management". Fair points; well made.
Paul Weaver reached much the same conclusion in The Guardian when discussing Rosberg's failure to overtake and asking: "Is it because the German has been psychologically scared by Hamilton's run of eight victories in 10 races? Rosberg knows he cannot beat Hamilton in wheel-to-wheel action if both cars are in the same condition."
It was left to The Independent to make the best attempt at trying to explore Rosberg's tactical mindset during the race. In an interesting sidebar alongside his race report, David Tremayne laid out the relevant detail with extensive quotes from Toto Wolff on how Mercedes went into the race not really knowing how the tyres would perform on the day - and why caution had to be applied. Wolff concluded: "As far as we were concerned Lewis did nothing wrong."
That probably says it all. For the time being.