Nico Rosberg has reflected on his fraught and infamous Formula 1 rivalry with Lewis Hamilton, admitting that the pair’s crashes were “more my fault” due to the Brit’s “genius”.
Rosberg and Hamilton were long-time friends from their days rising up the motorsport ranks in karting, with the German reaching F1 in 2006, one year before Hamilton.
The pair found themselves teammates at Mercedes in 2013, with Hamilton joining Rosberg, who joined upon its inception from Brawn GP in 2010.
And in the first year of the new V6 hybrid regulations, the dominant Mercedes package left them as the two outlying title rivals, leading to a hard and contentious battle, with Hamilton winning.
It was a repeat a year later, and in 2016, the rivalry reached boiling point with two high-profile clashes in Barcelona and Austria, but Rosberg utilised an early-season points advantage to hold off Hamilton and win the title at the final round in Abu Dhabi.
Speaking on the High Performance Podcast, Rosberg was asked if he needed to change as a person in order to defeat the now-seven-time World Champion.
“Oh, totally, because the real Nico Rosberg is way too nice,” he said. “I had to push and be tougher sometimes, even though it didn’t come naturally to me.”
Nico Rosberg reveals determination to show Lewis Hamilton: ‘No more Mr. Nice Guy’
Using Lando Norris’ 2024 title battle with Max Verstappen as an example, Rosberg advised the reigning World Champion to be tougher and cause a collision to “send a message” to the Dutchman.
Asked if he was drawing on personal experience, Rosberg quipped: “Well, we crashed, right?” adding: “That’s just me consciously saying I have to be more firm, I have to not yield.
“Naturally, I would yield, like I did so often before that, and I had to push myself hard, and it was part of my visualisation repetitions that I was doing in meditation.
“I was working very hard on that, visualising myself not yielding and being firm in my position, that was a strong part of my visualisation, and even I was meditating with posture, it’s like you meditate with a posture of strength.”
Rosberg was able to determine that, due to Hamilton’s in-car brilliance, the pair’s legendary clashes were more than likely down to him.
“It’s all these details that add up, and then in the heat of the moment, that preparation helps to hold your ground and not yield, and unfortunately, then of course it led to quite a few crashes and, unfortunately, because Lewis is such a genius, most of the time it was more my fault than his fault,” he surmised.
“But it didn’t matter, in hindsight, for me, I had to do that because it sent a message to him.
“I think it took him back a little bit. ‘Oh, something’s changing here with Nico. He’s not the Mr. Nice Guy anymore’, and that was a very important ingredient to then having a chance to actually beat him one day.”
Rosberg, upon completing his ambition of winning the title, quit whilst he was ahead and retired in the days after the race, with Hamilton going on to win another four titles.
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