“It Was a Minor Thing” – Nico Rosberg Reveals the Exact Starting Point of His Bitter F1 Rivalry With Lewis Hamilton

Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton are amidst one of the greatest rivalries of all time albeit with some respect for each other on and off the track. However, this necessarily wasn’t the case in the mid-2010s when two Mercedes teammates clashed in an attempt of laying dominion over each other.

It was 2013 and Nico Rosberg had just received a new teammate in Hamilton; the initial season went quite well for the duo. However, according to Rosberg, the starting point to their bitter rivalry was the 2014 season, though the German chose not to reveal the exact moment that caused his rivalry to spiral out of control.

How did the Lewis Hamilton-Nico Rosberg rivalry begin?

While interviewing Alain Prost, Rosberg opened up about how a minor on-track spat led his own rivalry with Hamilton to turn ugly.

“We experienced this as well in Mercedes, this negative relationship spiral. For us, I mean, the spiral really started 2014, actually. So, we’ve done a whole year, 2013, and then started in 2014. It’s not the right moment to go into any details,” he said.

“But, I know exactly where the spiral started, and it was actually where one of us did something where the other thought that it was on purpose but, actually, it was not on purpose. It was an accident. A minor thing.”

Influence from engineers increased the heat

Rosberg also reckoned that there was a lot of influencing from within the Mercedes F1 team and also the outside that got into each other’s heads which ended up worsening the already-blazing inferno.

“Then, the engineers picked up on it told the driver, ‘hey, look what the other guy is doing’. And then, you get influenced from the outside and you want to set it straight and build yourself up like that and cross over into the gray areas yourself as well,” Rosberg concluded.

Mercedes GP Formula One drivers Nico Rosberg (L) of Germany and Lewis Hamilton of Great Britain pose during a press conference with Toto Wolff, the Mercedes GP Executive Director, during the annual Mercedes Benz Stars & Cars event at the Mercedes Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany. (Photo by Alex Grimm/Bongarts/Getty Images)

With each passing year, even the duo’s respect for each other on and off the track disappeared, leaving them with nothing but an extreme level of animosity. 5 years later, Hamilton and Rosberg, who were indeed childhood friends, are still not on talking terms. So, will their relationship ever heal?

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