Nico Rosberg recently revealed that his battle with Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes has led to serious financial consequences for him.
Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg formed the driving duo at Mercedes for several years. They competed very hard with each other and collisions and crashes regularly occurred. At Mercedes, according to Nico Rosberg, they were so fed up with this at a certain point that he and Hamilton had to pay for the damage themselves.
Rosberg revealed during the ‘Business of Sport’ podcast that a clause was added to their contract that made them pay for the damage they caused during crashes. The most memorable crash was undoubtedly the one during the first lap of the Spanish GP, the race in which Max Verstappen ultimately achieved his first F1 victory.
Hamilton and Rosberg drove into each other towards the fourth corner and that was such a low point for their mutual battle that Mercedes decided to adjust the contracts of both drivers and make them pay for the costs of the crashes in the future.
“Because Lewis and I crashed, the team decided to make us pay for the damage,” said Rosberg. “We have to sign a contract that from then on, if we crashed and whoever it was his fault, we had to pay for the damage.”
Rosberg remembers that there was one specific incident between Hamilton and him that forced him to dig deep into his pockets.
“I still remember how much I had to pay, it was £360,000 (€420,000), I had to pay for one of the two crashes. It was very painful,” Rosberg reflects. “We made sure we certainly didn’t crash again.”
According to Rosberg, it was not the first time that he had to pay for damage caused by driving. He also had to pay for damage to the car during his time in F2. His father had borrowed to pay for the damage and when Nico Rosberg received his first salary at the Williams F1 team, he immediately paid his father back for the damage he had to pay for a crash with an F2 car.
“As soon as £80,000 was transferred to my account, it was immediately withdrawn because my father had taken out a loan for the damage I had driven in F2 at the time,” said Rosberg. “I crashed my car, my front wing and the front of the car were damaged and it cost £80,000.”
“His goal was not to finance my racing. We really tried to fund it with the sponsors. But that didn’t include the big crash. I had to take out a loan for that big crash. My first salary went towards that crash.”