LEWIS AND I CANNOT BE FRIENDS
As rift between chalk and cheese Mercedes rivals widens, Rosberg admits:
NICO ROSBERG is too polite to say what precisely he finds irritating about the team-mate with whom he is locked in the battle of his career. Sitting in an air-conditioned room away from the dry heat of the Bahrain paddock, he goes so far as to say this of Lewis Hamilton: ‘I know exactly how he is functioning. I understand him really well. All his attitudes. I can tell why he is doing whatever he is doing. Sometimes he annoys me. Some character traits.’
Go on, then, tell us what it is that gets under your skin.
‘I don’t want to give details,’ says Rosberg, diplomatic to the core.
At this point, the door of the Mercedes hospitality area, in which Rosberg is sitting, opens fast and loudly. It is Hamilton. He turns to face the door he has just walked through and slammed shut, his head down, and shouts in an almost childlike way: ‘Phew, phew, man, it’s hot,’ deporting himself as if he is about to pass out from heat stroke.
‘You see...?’ says Rosberg, his eyebrows arched.
The World Championship table tells us that 17 points separate these two Mercedes drivers. But far more separates them as people.
Rosberg grew up the son of privilege. His father Keke was 1982 world champion. He was brought up in Monaco where he attended a smart international school. He speaks five languages. But his life is the quiet life.
Not for him the Hamilton whirl of red carpets and celebrity acquaintances in Los Angeles.
He is not tattooed from chest to leg. While Hamilton courts fame, Rosberg’s dream evening finishes with him and wife Vivian staying in to watch an ‘educational documentary’, their labrador, Bailey, at their side. Family is important.
Rosberg has a trait rare among modern F1 drivers: a hinterland. He turned down a place at Imperial College to become a full-time racing driver. If he wins the World Champi- onship this year he will do so with a book under his arm. He is the driver who never stops learning.
Having married last year, he and Vivian are expecting their first child in August, during the sport’s summer break.
‘Typical German precision,’ he jokes. ‘I’m very excited and very lucky. There is a link between your personal life and your racing life, naturally.’
But we know he is a nice, intelligent chap, more settled in life than his rival. The point, when it comes to winning the most prestigious title in motor racing, is whether he has the capacity − the skill and cutting edge − to beat such an extravagant talent as Hamilton, the double World Champion who eclipsed him last year.
Rosberg has failed to match Hamilton this season, raising the question whether he will go the way of Mark Webber, who fell away after making his Red Bull team-mate Sebastian Vettel fight him for his first title.
It is Rosberg who begins work with his engineers earlier and finishes later − and always turns up on time, unlike Hamilton − but genius sometimes makes its own rules.
Raw talent is outstripping endeav-our. As a barbecue was staged in a paddock here on Friday, he toiled in engineering meetings while the rest of us tucked in.
He arrived here after a brief stop in Dubai, relaxing and training, before heading to the track to face an inquisition. Why had he criticised Hamilton for slowing down seven days ago in China and thus imperilling Mercedes’ one-two finish?
Rosberg answered in a relaxed and courteous manner.
‘Only today have there been millions of questions,’ he tells me once the wider interrogation was over. ‘Other than that, I have had some distance from it all. I don’t think about it in terms of me getting under his skin or him getting under mine.
‘For both of us, it has been annoying to spend so much time on the topic. Lewis and I are going through a difficult period.
‘We cannot totally be friends. We go through ups and downs. We are only speaking when we need to, but sometimes we have a laugh together.
‘We have so much to do with each other. We karted together. We are here together. I am not an ice man, either.ih ThingsThi can get to me, b but I Id do not get angry. I am rational. You won’t catch me getting emotional.’
The feud between the two has been running for a year, a situation magnified because there has been nobody else with whom to scrap. If Ferrari seriously push their way into the championship contest, that might change somewhat.
‘There are so many experiences that I can build on,’ says Rosberg. ‘Even now when he has taken quite a few points off me and been on a winning streak, I think back to last year when I had my best run after he had won four in a row.
‘I like to push myself. I am not at my peak as a driver, though I am probably close to it. But I have the experience of how to set up the car and deal with the whole world of Formula One. The intra-team stuff, personal relations, are helped by last year. It was so valuable.
‘Some people say I am not strong enough to beat Lewis, but I have as much belief as ever. I only wouldn’t believe I could beat him if I got to the end of the championship and I had lost. I’m constantly learning to make sure that is not what happens.’