Nico Rosberg, who drove for the Mercedes Formula 1 team from 2010 to 2016, has argued that George Russell is playing team chief Toto Wolff at his own game amid the ongoing contract negotiations.
Both Russell and his rookie team-mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli are due to be out of contract with the Brackley outfit at the end of the current season. While Wolff has confirmed that both drivers are the focus of the future for the team, despite earlier rumours linking Max Verstappen to a blockbuster move to Mercedes, no contract extensions have been announced at this time.
Rosberg claimed during an appearance on the Sky Sports F1 Show podcast that Wolff is “horrible to negotiate with” but that Russell is now giving the team chief a taste of his own medicine.
“It’s horrible to negotiate with Toto and he just disappears off planet Earth when you’re trying to get better terms. He just disappears and just doesn’t even let you talk with him. It’s horrible. I suffered a lot,” Rosberg explained.
“But now, it’s George doing the kind of reverse to Toto. It’s like he’s fighting Toto with his own medicine. George apparently is just not happy with a couple of terms in the contract. George is a Mercedes junior, so certainly he won’t be on a Lando Norris-level salary, by far and away not, and George feels Lando is equal to him.
“George, by any means, can drive at Lando’s level and can win races and championships if he has the car. So of course, he will feel a little bit of that’s not quite fair, that I’m so far away from Lando’s salary.”
Rosberg also noted that the sponsor commitments for drivers have increased.
George Russell, Mercedes
Photo by: Clive Rose / Getty Images
“And then also, there’s things like sponsor days,” he continued. “Nowadays, these teams have so many sponsors, paying so much money, and the only way for a team to give back to a sponsor is of course logo space, which is limited. And they want driver time. They want their customers to be able to meet George Russell, and so they’re using the drivers so much.
“I’m not allowed to say it’s painful for us, because everybody watching will be like, ‘shut up, you know, you earn so much money, all you have to do is go to a sponsor event, shake some hands, take some pictures, and I’m saying it’s painful’, but it is really painful!
“So George also there, will try and reduce.. The number can go up to like 60 days or something, 60 in 365 days. That’s a lot of days. And some of those 60 days are split into half-days. So it can actually be like 80 days. That’s a lot, like when all we want to do is go to the Nordschleife and go racing in GT3 cars.”
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