{"id":856061,"date":"2026-08-15T10:54:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T10:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/856061\/"},"modified":"2026-08-15T10:54:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T10:54:10","slug":"nico-rosberg-casts-doubt-on-sensational-mercedes-f1-firing-claim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/856061\/","title":{"rendered":"Nico Rosberg casts doubt on sensational Mercedes F1 firing claim"},"content":{"rendered":"

The battle for the Formula 1<\/a> title in 2016 saw Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton fight tooth and nail. Despite Toto Wolff claiming the Mercedes teammates<\/a> were close to being fired over the heated battle, Rosberg doubts it would have come down to it.<\/p>\n

The infamous title fight between Hamilton and Rosberg saw the two former childhood friends go head-to-head. With the two teammates both desperate to secure the title, the battle ended with Rosberg on top for the first time. The German grabbed his maiden title and, days later, announced his retirement from Formula 1. <\/p>\n

Rosberg: \u2018It never came to that fired thing\u2019<\/p>\n

One of the most explosive moments of the fight came in the form of the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix. The two Mercedes drivers crashed into each other, with both claiming the other was at fault. Speaking to The Athletic about the incident, Toto Wolff said he had decided to fire both Mercedes drivers.<\/p>\n

While Rosberg explained that Wolff was furious with his drivers, he does not believe it would come down to firing them.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe came in hard. He was like, \u2018What the hell are you guys doing out there?\u2019\u201d Rosberg said on the High Performance podcast.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause we handed the win to Red Bull, of course. That\u2019s the worst thing you can do, hand the win to the fierce enemy, Red Bull. That\u2019s the most horrible thing. So, Toto was not happy with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked whether Wolff had informed them they were fired, the German contradicted the claim: \u201cIt never came to that fired thing, no.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I know he actually had internal discussions with the big boss, Dieter Zetsche. About taking that step as a\u2026 I don\u2019t think it was\u2026 probably a suspension or something, would have been a first step, for a race, something like that.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, there was actually that conversation behind closed doors. It never came to us. That\u2019s pretty crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton had a ferocious on-track rivalry at Mercedes<\/p>\n

Paying for the crash <\/p>\n

The Spanish GP incident left the drivers furious with each other, but it also led Wolff to consider repercussions. While fighting for the title had the two going toe-to-toe, it could not go on like that. There needed to be consequences for the damage caused by the heated battle.<\/p>\n

\u201cToto put a contract on the table that we had to sign, and it was 50\/50 of the damage I had to pay myself,\u201d Rosberg explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt didn\u2019t matter whose fault it was. So, even if it was 90 per cent Lewis\u2019s fault, I had to pay 50\/50 of the actual damage we caused.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, one of the crashes I had to pay $360,000, so that definitely calmed us down. That was expensive. That was not really a fun exercise. So one crash was $360,000.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo that was one thing he did, contract on the table.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fallout from the incident served as a reminder, and Mercedes kept the damaged cars\u2019 side pods. The team hung them on the walls of their Brackley office.<\/p>\n

The difficulty of knowing who was at fault<\/p>\n

Moreover, both drivers blamed the other for the big crash. Regardless of who was at fault, they both had to pay for the damage and suffer the consequences. Despite this, Rosberg believes the Mercedes team could have handled the aftermath of the incident better.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing that they could have done better, the most important thing is a lot of communicating, preparing for every possible scenario as best you can, and the team also could have done\u2026 but it\u2019s hard to predict all these things. You can\u2019t predict that there\u2019s going to be such wheel-to-wheel incidents with teammates.\u201d Rosberg admitted.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut they could have made more of an effort, really laying out exactly whose fault it is in what different situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did a good job then in doing more and more of that. So it was really like all the way to the details, like if your tyre is there, then it\u2019s the inside car, his corner, but if you\u2019re blah blah blah. So we really went to the extent of every single detail.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt least you have guidelines that you can then refer to afterwards. Because if you have a crash, and it\u2019s a big, big, big fight behind those doors, because no one really knows who is at fault, then it really becomes difficult, because then people take sides, and feel unfairly treated, and that\u2019s when it all spirals out of control completely.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking at the possibility of another title battle among teammates, the team could consider Rosberg\u2019s reflections on handling wheel-to-wheel battles with a different set of Mercedes teammates. <\/p>\n

READ MORE: Mercedes admits intra team \u2018dilemma\u2019 as title battle intensifies<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The battle for the Formula 1 title in 2016 saw Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton fight tooth and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":856062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,823,849,85,4703],"class_list":["post-856061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-nico-rosberg","tag-sports","tag-toto-wolff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856061","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=856061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/856062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=856061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=856061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=856061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}