James Vowles revealed the sudden decision of Nico Rosberg to retire from the F1 realm startled him. The 2016 Formula One Champion decided to retire from Formula One after winning the Championship at Abu Dhabi.
Nico Rosberg joined Mercedes in 2010 but came in the limelight with a regular tussle with his teammate, Lewis Hamilton. After Hamilton joined Mercedes, the duo took the track by storm, winning consecutive races.
The friendship between the pair turned sour, and they became bitter rivals. The rivalry was so fierce, the Mercedes team management once thought to suspend the drivers just to keep them ‘in line’.
The seven-time world champion, Hamilton, won the Championship in 2014 and 2015, while Nico won it in 2016. Soon after winning the title, Nico decided to end his career at Silver Arrows, which ended the much-highlighted rivalry between him and Hamilton the Formula world has ever seen.
Nico Rosberg of Germany and Mercedes GP celebrates winning the F1 World Drivers Championship with Mercedes GP staff on December 1, 2016 in Brackley, England. (Photo by Steve Etherington/Getty Images)
Rosberg, the German’s decision to retire had taken everyone by shock back in 2016. While talking to Beyond the Grid, Vowles conveyed, “I was heartbroken, truly heartbroken for him that this is a guy that we all wanted to win a race, because he deserved it frankly, and he put so much effort into the team and so much of his life into the team that it was payback for him and that was his opportunity through the year.”
The 41-year-old British engineer and strategist further asserted, “I was heartbroken with the fact that that one race was where he dropped back. I felt for him – I still feel now – he didn’t get all the results that he deserved give the amount he was putting into the team.”
Toto Wolff says Nico Rosberg retires as "the best driver in F1 today", and leaves a "huge legacy" at Mercedes. https://t.co/QccZyIZ6Jj #F1 pic.twitter.com/Lzafctzeuy
— Autosport (@autosport) December 3, 2016
Prominence of Nico Rosberg in Mercedes AMG F1
Even though the Silver Arrows fields decent Valtteri Bottas as the replacement of Nico Rosberg, but the Finn’s rivalry with Lewis isn’t as fierce as it was with the German star Nico Rosberg.
Nico-Lewis’s 2014-16 era was Mercedes’s era of domination. Those were the golden days for the Mercedes fans. The German automobile giants have started dominating the sport and are still continuing their dominance. The spirit and hunger for victory were something that has been carried off by the German automobile giants from then to the present days, all thanks to the sheer performance upliftment by the 2016 Champion Nico Rosberg.
