Rosberg: Bottas must work harder to beat Hamilton
The "only way" Valtteri Bottas can beat Lewis Hamilton is for the Finn to work harder.
That is the view of Nico Rosberg, who says he learned that lesson when he was Hamilton's Mercedes teammate between 2013 and 2016.
Rosberg actually won the 2016 title before immediately retiring, and he says he is now watching closely as Bottas also tries to beat Hamilton.
"In my case, Lewis is a slightly more naturally talented driver," the German told Ilta Sanomat newspaper.
"He's the most talented driver in history together with Ayrton Senna, and so the only way to beat him was to do a tremendous amount of work.
"With Valtteri it's the same," Rosberg added.
"You can see he is working very hard and is very dedicated. It's his big strength," he said.
"Last year he had a hard time, but he's taken big steps this year. It's because of all the small details," said Rosberg. "Even his beard bringing publicity was important."
Rosberg said he also had to harden his personality in order to give himself the attitude necessary to take on a F1 great like Hamilton.
"It was difficult because I'm not naturally like that at all," he revealed. "I'm a nice guy, and I think Valtteri is too. It's really difficult to change yourself in that way.
"In the winter, I did two hours of psychological and philosophical exercises every other day. The workload was huge on top of everything else.
"I was doing the same thing for years, but in my last season I really pushed it," said Rosberg.
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Or you can hope that your teammate breaks down in a race or in qualifying. That's one of the problems with having a dominate team, you can win 4 races on the trot with your teammate cruising to 2nd places but in the 5th race if you break down all that those wins over your teammate are nearly wiped out.
I hope this season isn't decided like 2016
Do you mean the second finisher of the race is crowned the Champion?
Perhaps, you should read this: ""He's quicker, it's very simple," Lauda said in review of Rosberg's pole position. "He got everything right today, everything in order, and he was the quicker one, we have to respect that."
That was said after Rosberg out-qualified Hamilton five races in a row. Start here: https://www.espn.com/f1/story/_/id/14127889/nico-rosberg-advantage-lewis-hamilton-simple-niki-lauda
Rosberg was a very underestimated driver. One of the stronger single time WDC IMHO. He had a bit of luck in 2016 but he put himself in the position to pick up the Championship by being there or thereabouts when Hamiltons car had issues. But on his day and particularly in qualifying (if you discount the odd bit of doubtful tactics) he could hold his own even with Lewis. I doubt many others could have done so. And the big respect for him came when he immediately decided that enough was enough and retired after his WDC. Clever guy, nice guy outside of a F1 car and seriously quick. Bottas is no mug and has got stronger since joining Mercedes and is fast on a single lap but I'd still love to see Max go to Merc.
Let don't forget in 2016 Rosberg had 50% of Lewis enginers had to move over to Rosberg team, also during the early years he being Rosberg was always asking the team what is Lewis setting/speed during the race weekend.
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