After a confrontation with Lewis Hamilton, an old F1 rival, Nico Rosberg walked away “seriously angry.”.
Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg were teammates at Mercedes, and their animosity toward one another grew with each passing year and soured as soon as the team started succeeding in Formula One.
Nico Rosberg remembered his “seriously angry” and “zero fun” feelings after losing to Lewis Hamilton when the two were Mercedes teammates.
For the 2010 Formula One season, Rosberg committed to joining Mercedes.
Before Michael Schumacher’s retirement, he raced alongside him for three years, and his replacement wasn’t a slouch either.
In a shocking move, Hamilton left McLaren to join Mercedes in 2013.
He was already a world champion since 2008. Things were okay the first year they were together, but when they started winning frequently, as is so frequently the case between teammates, things got tense.
A period of unmatched Mercedes hegemony started with the 2014 season.
And aside from the 2016 campaign, when Rosberg won the championship before quitting racing right away, Hamilton received the majority of the credit.
Rosberg talked about how he had lost to Hamilton in the “Duel in the Desert,” the 2014 Bahrain Grand Prix, in particular.
While his teammate’s resentment grew, the Brit used it as a springboard to go on and win his second world championship.
The Sky Sports F1 podcast quoted him as saying, “I remember myself in Bahrain, I said after the race, ‘Wow, that was the most fun I’ve ever had in a racing car.'”.
The truth, however, was that this was the furthest thing from the truth.
“Because the truth is, it was absolutely no fun and I was seriously hurt and angry about coming in second to Lewis. As race car drivers, we must always have a Hollywood flair.
Evidently, you can’t always tell the truth because doing so will have negative consequences.
“.
In order to clarify a point he was making about Charles Leclerc, Rosberg used a personal example.
At the Italian Grand Prix last weekend, the Monegasque came in fourth, trailing teammate Carlos Sainz.
The Ferrari driver then said he was pleased with the outcome and the way he and Sainz had competed throughout the race.
Rosberg challenged those statements and said, “I was watching Charles, he just got beat by his team-mate who also ran him off the track once.
Yes, that was really enjoyable, Charles is remarking as he sits there.
Enjoying a beer with Carlos in happier times. I wondered if he was pulling a Nico and saying the exact opposite of how he was feeling, or if this was now genuine.
“But I believe it was pretty sincere.
As a result, I was of the opinion that Leclerc is somehow a little bit too nice.
He lost out the day before by letting the team give Carlos the slipstream twice at the end of qualifying as opposed to splitting it, as he had already lost out on the strategy.
He should not have allowed Carlos to have a double slipstream in qualifying; it should have been one person’s first run and the other person’s second.
Therefore, I’m unsure. Maybe he’s just a really nice guy, but that might be a bit too nice.
“.