something we don’t talk about when we talk about nico rosberg, and honestly even though it involved being a horrendous cunt, is that he did what generations of drivers have tried and failed to do - he refused to be made second driver and still walked away with his championship.
like think about that. there are so many people in my memory, and many more before that, that fell to that hurdle by accepting their fate or switching teams and making the wrong call, or just never quite getting there. you’ve got valtteri and daniel and mark webber and felipe massa and before that you have rubens barrichello and david coulthard and eddie irvine and so on and so on. and they either had some moment of quiet resignation to it or they let it completely destroy them, sometimes both.
nico rosberg was the part of the foundations of mercedes. he was there since it took the name mercedes and was brought in to play second fiddle to michael fucking schumacher, and then he outdrove him every damn day, when the mercedes wasn’t championship contention material but was outclassing the rest of the midfield. i remember it so well when you had button and hamilton at mclaren, vettel and webber were at red bull, and alonso and massa were at ferrari. you had no idea what was gonna happen with that top six but you could count on one thing like clockwork, nico rosberg would be seventh, making that scrappy little bastard of a car sing.
and then lewis arrived when schumi left and people assumed nico would play that second fiddle like he hadn’t won them the lion’s share of the points with schumi in the other car. no one gave him his due. and then the car was a winning car and he was suddenly a winner, someone no one had ever rated from that stacked as hell grid. and lewis already had his championship. he wanted more, sure, but he didn’t need to prove that he had it in him the way nico did with his dad and everything else hanging over his head.
let’s not beat around the bush, mercedes wanted him to be second driver. toto came in with lewis and didn’t respect what nico had achieved under ross brawn. lewis was already a championship winner even if nico knew the car and the team much better. certainly the management at mercedes were never on his side once toto took the reigns. and lewis must have expected it somewhat too, it’s just how teams work. and his long-standing teammate at that point had been jenson, who had just as many championships and seniority in the sport, which made them as close to equals as possible and also frustrated lewis no end at that time because on some days he was second driver. it was owed to him, at last, to have a teammate whose only job was to prop him up.
i’m not saying if it was the right decision, or the ethical decision, or a decision that he doesn’t deeply and intimately regret, but the point at which nico had to say to himself no, lewis isn’t allowed to do this to me, no i won’t be second fiddle, not even to my best friend, must have required such strength of conviction like sport has never seen. and yeah it’s sad to think that a championship ended a friendship that old and that caring, but reframe it for a moment. what must it have felt like to escape out from under the thumb of schumacher who was never ever going to support nico, who could be affable outside racing but had a long history of being the meanest of sports on the grid, and think finally, a friend, someone to support and care for me, someone who wants me to win just like i want him to win, and be told no, it’s just the same as it was. like yes this is work, but imagine what that would do to you in any career - a fellow artist, a fellow businessman - to be told that your friend, in any context, sees you as an obstacle to overcome, or even worse just a tool to get ahead.
like we make fun of that - look at the man that sold his soul for a championship - but so did everyone else, so did lewis even. we have no idea who went first in sacrificing the friendship to the flames but we do know it was the first time nico ever fucked someone over in the sport. he’d never driven a winning car before. lewis had, and lord knows he learnt well enough from fernando, from jenson even.
nico had never had the opportunity to do it, and even when he was teammates with schumi, it was a noticeably sedate schumi racing in a midfield car. there wasn’t a championship for him to snatch at like he had done before. and that must do damage to you, as someone that’s never been at that kind of desperate infighting team before. and to have someone who is supposed to love you more than anyone else on the grid right there in it, in your first true experience of it? ooft.
then you think about him retiring, right after he’s finally done it. he must have wanted to step away before hand but imagine that friendship up in smoke and to go away empty-handed, with nothing to show for it. so he says no, i have to have this championship. all this had to have been for something. think about keke, who won one world championship pretty much by accident. how he won because the front runners on the grid that season died in those cars. and what had just happened to poor old jules. and how keke has always insisted that nico is his greatest achievement, not his championship, his son. and nico has just become a father. think about how important his daughters are to him, how much he loves them. how he was burning down his relationship with vivian too just to get this stupid title, these stupid trophies.
and maybe some part of him thinks i can fix this, i can have lewis back if i just put the weapons down, if i walk away. but lewis doesn’t see it like that - he sees it as cowardly, that nico took something from him and didn’t give him the chance to get it back, even though held already proved over and over and over that he could beat nico, that he was definitively the better driver. but nico only had to be better once - keke won his championship with a single race win to his name that season and it was enough. goddamit it was enough. and even if it hurt him to give up being in that car, nico had things that were more important. just once was enough for him in a way it never could be for lewis. lewis has nothing else, no partner, no children, no real friends at that point. of course he could never understand. maybe he envied nico in that moment, for once to be enough, but lewis never had that luxury.
god it’s so tragic, but nico really did achieve the impossible.
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