‘We’ll just not be best friends’ – Rosberg opens up on Hamilton relationship after his sudden retirement

Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton shared one of the most intense and memorable rivalries in F1 history, so it’s perhaps not surprising that the German believes they still won’t “be best friends” a decade after the “crazy intense” 2016 season.

The pair had competed alongside one another since their karting days, but their relationship unravelled over four seasons as Mercedes team mates between 2013 and 2016, during which Hamilton won two titles and Rosberg clinched one.

Their tumultuous partnership in that final year produced multiple costly clashes, such as at the Austrian and Spanish Grands Prix, but Rosberg ultimately secured his sole Drivers’ Championship by five points over the Briton.

He went on to announce his shock retirement from the sport just five days after his triumph, opening the door for Valtteri Bottas to join the Silver Arrows for the 2017 season and beyond.

“I apologise to all the fans at the time who wanted to see that fight go on because it was a great battle between Lewis and I,” Rosberg shared on the latest episode of official podcast F1 Beyond The Grid. “I'd given it my all and achieved my dream, and to go out on a high is something really valuable for the rest of my life.

“In hindsight, it was the right decision thankfully – I didn't know at the time. It was scary. It was very scary, but it was right for me. I could not have got better. I was at the peak, I know that.

“For me, [another season] was going to be tough because I just threw everything at [2016] – more than everything, and it was crazy intense. It was not really realistic to keep up that level year in, year out.”

He explained that while Team Principal Toto Wolff accepted that his decision was “definitive”, Non-Executive Chairman and former World Champion Niki Lauda was “more on the angry side” due to the position it left Mercedes in.

“I was compromising their team, unfortunately,” Rosberg admitted. “They now have to find a replacement and there was nobody there initially. That's why I decided on telling them so quickly and announcing my retirement so quickly – it was only for the team.

“I would have preferred to do one month celebrating and then after one month say, ‘Oh, by the way, I'm going to end it here.’

"That would have been much nicer, because the retirement almost became a bigger thing afterwards than my winning, actually. For me, that was not optimal, but it didn't matter.

“The most important thing was to reduce how much I'm compromising the team, and not make it even worse unnecessarily. I wanted to tell them immediately, as quickly as possible so that they could have time to replace and rebuild.”

Although he still mingles in the F1 world, primarily as a pundit, Rosberg has no regrets about his retirement from racing and remains satisfied that he was able to go out on the high of being crowned champion – even if Hamilton made it a challenge at the season finale.

Reflecting on that momentous day in Abu Dhabi, Rosberg said: “Of course, he’s always gracious in those moments.

“Just like I also congratulated him when he won the championship and told him that it was deserved, you know, and then he congratulated me as well. It was a hard one, though, because he didn't obey the team orders. He was bunching us up.

“It triggered the risk that the team would lose the race win because there's [Sebastian] Vettel and [Max] Verstappen coming up from behind, and it's very clear that he's driving slowly on purpose, very slowly.

“It’s understandable in the situation that you're not just going to hand it to me at that moment and you try and keep it in the grey area and keep playing the game.

“For me now, in hindsight, it’s amazing that he did that because it just became all the nicer. It was horrible in the moment.”

Asked whether his relationship with Hamilton improved after his retirement, he replied: “Of course. Anything will thaw after that. It's fine now, it’s neutral.”

He rejected a comparison of their situation to that of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost following the latter’s sabbatical in 1992, adding: “Maybe not to that extent I think because they really became friends, in a weird way.

“We're just neutral and it's okay, it's nice. We will just not be best friends ever, you know?”

To listen to this week’s episode of F1 Beyond The Grid, simply hit go on the audio player above or click here to listen via your preferred podcasting platform.

You can also check out a huge selection of previous episodes – spanning every decade of F1 – in our dedicated F1 Beyond The Grid library.