"what was your relationship like with lewis in this period (2014-16)?"
nr: "there was no relationship. it's proper war, it's like war. don't talk, no relationship."
"but you were great buddies growing up?"
nr: "yes, but when you're fighting for a world championship, you will always compromise the friendship for the world championship, unfortunately. it's such a big dream. if you had to choose, you choose the wdc.
friendship...i mean it's not like we were best friends at the time. we were best friends as little kids, but then we drifted apart. we got on well, but not best friends anymore. between getting on well or winning the championship, you chose the championship.
to win, you need to exploit grey areas all the time. in wheel to wheel, you cannot be the nice guy. you need to push into the grey area, hold your ground."
"but you two were practically living together! engineering meetings together, garage, media."
nr: "so as you can imagine, not the most comfortable environments."
"many people are still intrigued by the relationship, have you and lewis spoken since?"
nr: "we're neutral now. craziest thing is that we were neighbours in the same building, but i've moved out since. we saw each other a bit, we're just neutral."
"have you ever spoken about 2016?"
nr: "uh, no. we took a personal moment after i made my decision (to retire), but i think we have very different lives and interests, so we wouldn't be best friends anyway. so it's just neutral, it's fine. bad things happened anyway, so you can't really fix that easily. who's going to say sorry first?
i'm amazed that he's still driving. i've been out for 10 years and he's still going. it's incredible how he has managed to build his life with such stability as well, to be able to have such longevity. no scandals, performing at such a high level. it's not only about being a great racecar driver, you need to build a life around that. no scandals, there's so many examples, and lewis has done an incredible job to perform at such a high level for so long.
he's taking on a new challenge at ferrari and a huge struggle. it's getting better now with these new regs, he's performing much better than last year, but he's still up against leclerc who's at his peak and one of the best of this generation. it's going to be difficult, but great to see him take on the challenge."
"would you like to see him become an 8x wdc?"
nr: "yeah, of course. he deserves it. it would be great to see him keep progressing as he has this year. i think he will win a race, but to get a championship? the car isn't good enough and his level is not quite there. hopefully he can improve in the season." <3
I FOUND THE VIDEO + here's an alive reuploaded link for it ! it was a 2014 mercedes ad for the amg sl63, which nico and lewis both got to design custom models for!!! here's a video where they discuss it :)
