Nico Rosberg: “Hamilton, in terms of natural talent, is the best in history and to beat him my superpower was preparation. Each kilo of my body weight was three hundredths and I even removed the paint from my helmet to weigh less”
It’s been 10 years now, but the duel between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg in Mercedes It remains one of the best in recent times. The Briton was clearly the leader of the Brackley project, but the German did not give in and, in the third year of the hybrid era, he managed to beat him and take his only world champion title. The level of exhaustion and effort was such that, once with the trophy in his hands, Rosberg decided to hang up his monkey and end his sporting career.
Beating a legend like Lewis Hamilton requires an extreme level of concentration and dedication. And Rosberg based his coronation on that. The German, in the F1 Beyond The Grid podcast, stressed that he would not have been able to win without preparation that could be described as obsessive.
“My superpower was preparationn. That’s the superpower. Because as for natural talent, Lewis is the best of all time and the greatest, so I’m not going to beat him with natural talent. «As for nutrition, first of all there is body weight. Tthree hundredths of a second per revolution was equivalent to one kilogram of my body weight. That’s two seconds in race time. So one kilogram makes the difference between winning and coming second. It’s crazy,” explained the German.
As every thousandth counts, Rosberg even decided to remove the paint from his helmet so he could weigh less and be faster when push came to shove. There is no detail that the German could have missed in trying to achieve his goal.
“My helmet is black because I removed the paint. I’m the only one who has an unpainted carbon helmet because I went to the manufacturer and asked him: ‘How much does the paint weigh?’ They told me: “Well, the difference in weight between the unpainted helmet and the painted one is 80 grams.” And I told them: “Well then we take it off. The paint is gone.” AND It all comes down to these details. I gave up cycling, even though it was my favorite endurance sport, and lost 600 grams in my leg muscles. That’s a lot. “It’s more than one and a half hundredths per revolution.”
“Then I got to qualifying at Suzuka in the year I won the championship and got pole by two hundredths. That was because of the helmet, to the leg muscles and to another thing I did: pole position. And that also led me to the world championship, because Lewis finished third, I got the advantage in the points and, with it, the world championship. It’s like it’s all in the smallest details: I managed to add up those marginal gains to make a significant improvement and finally managed to beat the unbeatable Lewis.”
The psychological work
As we mentioned, in addition to the physical aspect, the duel against Hamilton left Rosberg emotionally exhausted. For this reason he decided to retire at the top and enjoy other pleasures in life. Mental preparation to face Lewis also required countless time and dedication.
“To prepare for 2016, I did two hours of mental training every other day. It was harder than physical trainingharder than going to the gym to stay focused and focused and get through all that. It was a lot of things: meditation, repetition, visualization, techniques to stay in the present when you feel that the emotions of fear invade youwhen you are terrified of screwing up and having everyone laugh at you because you are in the lead in the race and fail at the start. “As a driver, you have those fears.”
“Together with my psychologist, something very important for me in 2016, fAlso never, ever use the word “championship” in any conversation with the media.. Never get into that topic, because they always told you: “Now you are the favorite for the championship, right, Nico?” And that diverted me; The best way to perform for me is to think only about the next race. I want to prepare for the next race with the goal of winning it. I even said it in the last race, when it was only about the championship,” Rosberg concluded.
