2016 Method 1 champion Nico Rosberg has admitted that his notorious on-track collisions with Lewis Hamilton have been generally the results of a deliberate, psychological determination to cease yielding and shed his pure tendency to be “too good” on observe.
The 2016 title battle between the Mercedes team-mates stays some of the fiercely contested intra-team rivalries within the historical past of the championship.
Whereas reflecting on the 2016 season on the High Performance podcast, Rosberg defined, when requested if he needed to cease being himself: “Oh, completely, as a result of the true Nico Rosberg is method too good. I needed to push and be more durable generally, regardless that it did not come naturally to me.”
The previous driver drew comparisons with McLaren driver Lando Norris’s battles with Crimson Bull ace Max Verstappen.
“And once more, you could have the identical instance with Lando,” Rosberg continued. “Lando, typically, individuals will say he is simply too good. In wheel-to-wheel battles, he has all the time misplaced towards Max. Within the final yr, in each wheel-to-wheel battle towards Max, he misplaced out. What Lando must do as soon as is simply maintain his floor, trigger a crash.
“And that can ship a message to Max. ‘Oh, he is altering, he is changing into extra ferocious. Possibly I must calm it down a bit subsequent time towards him as a result of in any other case we will crash.’ And also you simply have to try this.”
Going again to his personal 2016 championship title combat, the 40-year-old mentioned his personal crashes with the now-seven-time champion.
World Champion Nico Rosberg, Mercedes AMG F1 shakes palms with crew mate and race winner Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes AMG F1
Picture by: Mercedes AMG
“We crashed. And that is simply me consciously saying I’ve to be extra agency. I’ve to not yield as I might. Naturally, I might yield like I did so typically earlier than that and I needed to push myself exhausting.
“It was a part of my visualisation, the repetitions that I used to be doing in meditation. I used to be working very exhausting on that, visualising myself not yielding and being agency in my place. That was a powerful a part of my visualisation and even I used to be meditating with posture.
“You meditate with a posture of power, and it is all these particulars that add up, after which within the warmth of the second, that preparation helps to carry your floor and never yield and sadly, then in fact it led to fairly a number of crashes.”
Rosberg went on to win the drivers’ championship in 2016 by 5 factors over his team-mate, and retired on the finish of the identical yr.
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