When Nico Rosberg’s 2016 Formula 1 Championship battle came down to the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, he was left with one final obstacle: Max Verstappen.
Reflecting on his title battle, he recounted the ‘horrible’ moment when he realised his hopes of leaving the weekend victorious came down to passing the Dutchman. He thanked the now four-time world champion, who kept it clean when the two went wheel to wheel.
After a long, gruelling 2016 season, Rosberg held the championship lead with the trophy and title in sight by the final race in Abu Dhabi. Coming into the weekend, he needed a top-3 finish to take his maiden title.
However, as the race progressed, Lewis Hamilton held the lead and backed the field up, leaving Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen threatening his hopes.
Speaking on the Beyond the Grid Podcast, the German described what it felt like to be told he needed to beat the Dutchman, who at the time was widely known as ‘Mad Max’.
“Ah, horrible, horrible,” Rosberg said, speaking about Hamilton’s strategy in the race, “Yeah, he was unfolding his strategy, and it was working. It was working perfectly. He put me behind Max Verstappen with that strategy.
“I should never have been behind Max Verstappen, and suddenly I’m behind Max Verstappen, the worst guy to be behind. It was Mad Max at the time. It was a 50-50 chance of a crash if you ever tried to pass him or whatever. 50-50.
“So Lewis, it was working. His strategy was working. Yeah. And understandably, he has to do something. So he tries something, and it was working.
“And then probably the most extreme moment in my whole career is when Tony Ross, who I’m so grateful for because I have my whole career to kind of thank him for, I did every year except for one with him as my engineer, and there are many people to thank, but Tony Ross would be one, comes on the radio and says, ‘Nico, your championship is at risk. You need to now pass Max Verstappen in the next two laps.'”
While Rosberg has a championship to fight for, Verstappen was still proving himself in F1. He’d quickly become one of the drivers you didn’t want to try to pass, which Rosberg remembers worrying about in the moment.
“What? You don’t pass Max Verstappen. Like, it’s not something you do. Your championship is at risk. Like, what is that? Where does that come from?” He said.
However, he did make it past the Dutchman, securing his title. Even now, a decade after one of the defining moments of Rosberg’s career, he praised Verstappen for how he raced in that moment in 2016. He went on to say he was ‘forever grateful’ for Verstappen.
“Amazing move, and forever thankful to Max because he played it fairly, left the space,” added Rosberg. “Forever grateful, like, amazing. Thank you so much, forever.
“And then I come out of that, and my next thought, I think you can start to realise that there was quite an intensity mentally going on here, so then I come out of that, and my foot starts shaking so much from fear and adrenaline that I’m uncontrollable on the throttle pedal.
“I’ll never have that in my life again. I’ll never experience that. I’d never had it before. The foot goes uncontrollable, jumping. The whole foot is jumping from adrenaline, from Max.”
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