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Lewis Hamilton's former adversary Nico Rosberg recently remembered when he had to send his driver's championship trophy to the Mercedes driver at the end of the 2017 F1 season.
The German had won the title in 2016 and subsequently retired from the sport. The championship-winning driver for a particular season can keep the trophy for only one year as he has to send it back at the end of the season.
For Nico Rosberg, the driver he had to send the trophy for was Lewis Hamilton as the Mercedes driver beat Sebastian Vettel for the title in 2017. The former world champion recently looked back at the moment during his stint with Sky Sports at the 2023 F1 Spanish GP.
“You have to give the World Championship back! You only get to keep it for a year. I had to give it to Lewis. No, I had someone pick it up from my house, put it in a boot and drive it to Lewis’ home. That was not cool!”
Talking about Mercedes' current predicament, Rosberg admitted that he was a bit surprised that they had not tried to poach personnel from Red Bull.
"The teams are going for it to try and get the talent from Red Bull, which is the normal way in F1. That’s what always happens. Mercedes – strange that they haven’t been a little bit more active there. The knowledge that you also get around a set of regulations when you take someone from the best team is just so valuable. Perhaps that’s a little surprising."
How Nico Rosberg beat Lewis Hamilton in 2016
Former McLaren and Williams team member Sam Michael recently talked about one key aspect that helped Nico Rosberg beat Lewis Hamilton in 2016. Having worked with both drivers, Michael felt that it was the technical acumen of the German that proved to be the deciding factor.
He said during his interview on the Beyond the Grid podcast:
“I never worked with them together in the same team. But the ultimate result is they raced against each other, and Lewis statistically was faster, more times."
He continued:
“But the huge advantage that Nico had over any driver was he was technically very smart. He was really good at understanding the car, and understanding how the engineering worked, and he used that to his advantage to win the Championship in 2016."
Lewis Hamilton will end up dominating the sport once Rosberg retired in 2016 and win every world title until 2021, when Max Verstappen became numero uno.
