Rosberg Says the Media Impacts Team Harmony

Former world champion, Nico Rosberg admitted that the news stories run by the media affected the relationship between him and his Mercedes crew during his title run-in with then rival and teammate, Lewis Hamilton.

Rosberg and Hamilton had been teammates since their karting days and known each other for a really long time but their relationship soured by the time the German took the world championship and immediately retired in 2016.

The teammate battle had always been well-documented but now Rosberg has said that his interactions with his team also suffered because of how the media played out his comments. “During that battle, the media had such power that maybe they did not even realise”, Rosberg told SunSport.

“They influenced my engineering team because all they do is read about F1 and the headline ‘Rosberg disses his team’ or whatever even it was not 100% like that. If I am sitting next to them while they are reading it during a race weekend, it has influence, so the drivers have to take the media game importantly.”

Now that he has taken his leave from F1, the question of whether Lewis and himself are still not on talking terms remains. But Rosberg admitted that he would like to mend the relationship with his former best friend.

“I am not a competitor anymore, so for me I am open to being neutral and having a laugh again, why not? I have a lot of respect for Lewis and what he has done. Of course, we had some crazy and intense moments and run ins but that’s unavoidable I guess if you are fighting for the world championship” said the German.

Rosberg also said that he sought help from a mental trainer on how to handle the media. “We were so ultra-competitive. I kept on saying that I was taking it one race at a time, but that was my defence. Of course I never admitted that at the time. I did not talk about it. I worked closely on it with a mental trainer”, he says.