Nico Rosberg may have been overshadowed and beaten by his Mercedes teammate and title rival Lewis Hamilton, but the German did all that is required of him by taking no risks on his way to second place at the Brazilian Grand Prix.
He heads to the season finale in Abu Dhabi with a 12 points advantage and needs only to finish behind Hamilton to win the 2016 Formula 1 world title. He spoke after his overtime shift at Interlagos.
You obviously did what you needed to do today. I guess the key was not being tempted to respond to the provocation of Red Bull twice when they went onto the Intermediate. You basically just, both of you, stayed with that Wet tyre.
NR: Yeah, it was touch and go but for sure it was risky to go on the Inter because it was just very, very tricky through those couple of sections. It just, as you saw, it caught out Felipe and a few others and you know, of course, in the position that we’re in, can’t really take such big risks. So it was the right decision, of course, and the strategy came in our favour, which is good.
And what’s the emotion now. Are you feeling relieved at the end of today? If you’re here again on Sunday afternoon in Abu Dhabi, you’re the World Champion.
NR: Yeah, I mean of course in light of that I have to… I can live with a second place today for sure even though I was hoping for the win – but of course second is OK, yeah.
The race was twice interrupted, you had to hang around for half an hour each time. How distracting is that?
NR: It was not a problem. It was fine, it was a good time to relax, eat some spaghetti and good to go again.
The Brazilian fans don’t have a Brazilian driver winning and fighting for the title and they stayed from 7am until now in the rain, so I would like you to comment on that because you guys gave them a very good race despite the conditions.
NR: For me, even yesterday going to the auto show it was amazing. So many people were wearing my hat and so it’s really good to see a big big support and even now, just before the press conference, I went down to see everybody and they were going crazy so it’s nice to have so much support here in Brazil so I’m very thankful for that.
In the past we’ve had much worse conditions than these, much more rain – for example Fuji 2007 – but it seems more and more that driving with these cars is almost impossible, too dangerous in these conditions today. Can you explain why it gets more and more difficult to drive these cars in the rain and can you understand that some people can’t understand that a racing car is not driveable in the rain by the best drivers in the world – how is that possible?
NR: It’s down to the tyres, you know, not coping well with the aquaplaning. We know that and we’ve been working on that now for next year and so we’re hopeful to make progress on that. Of course it would be good, you know, if it wasn’t so on the edge as soon as there’s a bit of standing water.
Nico, you won last year in Abu Dhabi, Lewis won in 2014. A comment from you about the last round of the championship, the decision of the world title. Do you think you have more chance than Lewis who has more affinity with track? A comment in general about the last round of the championship.
NR: Well, it’s going to be a great, exciting race weekend, a great battle for sure. I would like to win the race and that’s what I’m going there… I’m going to try and do that for sure. I’ve had good experience there in the past but of course that’s not going to help this year. You know we all start from zero this year, every time we go to a different track. Yeah, feeling good so let’s see.
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