Yes but no telemetry and also didn't he have rubber stuck in his front wing so he was losing performance? He did very well to get 2nd.
Multiple cars get rubber in the wing. At his pitstop they didn't remove any rubber from Rosberg's car in the end, just gave him a bit less wing(maybe more but I presume less). Hamilton on the other hand did get rubber removed from the wing during his pitstop. It's happening less this year from what I've seen but not surprising, outside of this known ultra abrasive track there have clearly been far far less marbles.
Rosberg utterly screwed up the start, in fact a terrible start then with EASILY the fastest car on the grid took what 3/4's of the race to pass Alonso in to second. IIRC he got by Ricciardo via pitstops, passed Vettel on track then breezed past Alonso with zero fight or effort at all.
I also can't quite be sure as the replays aren't great. But it looks to me like Rosberg overcooked it into the first corner and ended up drifting wide and smashed Bottas. I say that as in the replay there is a bit of smoke off the front right tire and it looks like he locks it a bit and then his line certainly drifts wider when at that point of the corner it should be getting tighter. So poor start, hit Bottas and passed 2 slower cars... amazing.
Telemetry wise what messages do the team really need except save a bit of fuel or not. Ultimately it resulted in him telling them fuel now and then and they told him it was fine. Every driver pretty much would have driven the same way as all three previous races to save tires and fuel. We've also seen that fuel is no where near the issue people thought it would be and who had significant tire problems today? When the front grip went they all pitted... not particularly difficult there.
Now if the car actually had a problem then lack of telemetry could have been a huge issue. Engine overheating and they couldn't tell him, that kind of thing could have ruined his race.
I would say for Rosberg, very poor first lap, stuck a LONG time behind slower cars, blew ALonso/Vettel away in the final stint where Merc have killed everyone at every race.
The general thing so far has been RBR/Ferrari burning fuel earlier in the race trying to hang on, and later in the race, particularly final stint or final 15 laps dropping back hugely while Merc do the opposite. Are great on fuel till final stint when they put the engines up and watch the gaps increase drastically. Vettel was on the back of Rosberg in Malaysia till the final 10 laps when he dropped back massively.
Outside of the first lap, he was fine but nothing special certainly and the first lap was very poor.
