2016 Formula 1 world champion Nico Rosberg has revealed a personal hurdle he had to overcome to defeat Lewis Hamilton, which saw him abandon being the “real” version of himself.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Rosberg famously decided to retire from F1 immediately after sealing his world drivers’ title in the Abu Dhabi season finale, securing the championship by five points.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
It brought an end to Hamilton’s initial period of dominance with Mercedes after he won back-to-back titles, as well as bringing Rosberg’s career to a close.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
The German gave everything to defeat the seven-time world champion and did not want to go through it again, having finally reached the top of the sport and achieved his lifelong dream.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Beating Hamilton took more than on-track performance for Rosberg; he had to abandon being his true self because he was “way too nice”, realising he needed to become tougher.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
He sees similar traits in current reigning world champion Lando Norris, particularly when the Briton has battled Max Verstappen.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
The Dutchman has consistently gotten the better of the McLaren driver, with Rosberg believing Norris needs to “hold his ground” just once to send a clear message.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Discussing if he had to end being his true self alongside Hamilton, Rosberg explained on the High Performance podcast: “Oh, totally. Yeah, because the real Nico Rosberg is way too nice. I had to push and be tougher sometimes, even though it didn’t come naturally to me.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“You have the same example with Lando. Generally, people will say he’s just too nice. In wheel-to-wheel battles, he has always lost against Max in recent years. In every wheel-to-wheel battle against Max, he has lost out because what Lando needs to do just once is hold his ground and cause a crash.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“And that will send a message to Max: ‘Oh, he’s changing, he’s becoming more ferocious. Maybe I need to calm it down a bit next time against him because otherwise we’re going to crash.’\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“And you just have to do that.”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Asked if that is what he did against Hamilton, Rosberg replied: “Well, we crashed, right?”, referring to Barcelona 2016.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"2016 Formula 1 world champion Nico Rosberg has revealed a personal hurdle he had to overcome to defeat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":709022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-709021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/709022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}