Nico Rosberg reveals ‘dagger in the heart’ Lewis Hamilton discovery at Mercedes
Nico Rosberg has opened up about what it was like to share a Mercedes team with Lewis Hamilton.
Nico Rosberg has opened up on what it was like to compete alongside Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes.
The 2016 World Champion pointed out that Hamilton was a strong lobbyist, able to work with Mercedes leadership to get what he needed to be successful.
Nico Rosberg makes Lewis Hamilton admission
When Lewis Hamilton first joined the Mercedes Formula 1 team in 2013, he was a one-time World Champion joining one of his childhood friends at a team that could have been considered ‘his’.
Nico Rosberg joined Mercedes as it re-entered F1 in 2010, giving him three years alongside Michael Schumacher.
When Schumacher retired, Rosberg may have felt like he’d inherit the team leadership role, but the signing of Hamilton brought with it unexpected repercussions — which the German driver recently opened up about on the Sky F1 podcast.
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“Unfortunately, there’s a whole load of lobbying you can do as a driver, which would benefit you,” Rosberg explained.
“That was one of Lewis’ greatest strengths when I was fighting him at Mercedes.
“He was really good at building strong relationships with all the leadership. Suddenly, I would find out ‘Lewis last night went for dinner in Stuttgart with Dieter Zetsche’, who was the CEO of Daimler.
“It was like a dagger in the heart just to hear that, because who knows what they were talking about? He was very good at doing that, and he will need to be using those skills now at Ferrari, because it never hurts to get more and more support from the team.”
Rosberg brings up the story because, over a decade on, Hamilton has once again joined a team alongside an established ‘team leader’.
Charles Leclerc first joined Ferrari in 2019, during which time he partnered former four-time World Champion Sebastian Vettel for two years before Carlos Sainz Jr. joined the team in 2021.
Leclerc has made it clear that he sees his Formula 1 future intimately tied to Ferrari, but the arrival of Hamilton has likely brought with it a change in team dynamics — both due to Hamilton’s record-breaking success as well as the massive sum Ferrari spent to secure his services.
Though Hamilton’s signing came with a lot of hype, the F1 2025 season has so far failed to pan out for the British driver, lagging behind team-mate Leclerc, seemingly finding the SF-25 a uniquely difficult challenge.
The seven-time champion revealed that he has prepared ‘documents’ to share with Ferrari details thoughts on the current machine and his suggestions for possible tweaks or areas of exploration in the future.
Though he has clarified that these are just suggestions and not orders, Rosberg’s pointed mention of Hamilton’s successful Mercedes lobbying suggests that there could be more here than meets the eye.
Read next: The winners and losers from the F1 2025 season — so far
