User blog comment:Nspartan011/Would optimus have died still in the 84 transformers movie if Hot Rod had not gotten in the way/@comment-16693-20130714032626

It looks to me that it's strongly implied that Optimus Prime knew exactly what Megatron was doing.

It's clearly shown that Optimus Prime would have had about a second or so to shoot Megatron if Hot Rod hadn't been there.