"It just got too heated and too extreme" - Nico Rosberg on his 'extremely difficult' rivalry with Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes

Nico Rosberg reflected on his rivalry with Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes team as an 'extremely difficult' situation. The 2016 champion revealed that their intense rivalry went to the extent where their team had to step in to remind them of their conduct with each other on the track.

Reflecting upon his rivalry with the Briton, Rosberg spoke to Sky Sports saying:

“We made it extremely difficult. It went to the point that we had a code of conduct, a paper, what we were allowed to do in a wheel-to-wheel battle, even penalties with a lot of zeros on them attached to that because there was no other way. It just got too heated and too extreme.”

The battle between the two Mercedes drivers went down in the history books as the "Silver Wars". The intensity of their rivalry, however, would reflect within the team that had to step in to remind them of their conduct or they were heavily penalized. Their worst clash came when they took each other out at the 2016 Spanish GP with neither car completing the race. That year, the championship went down to the wire and was won by Rosberg. The season finale, however, is remembered as a race where Lewis Hamilton disobeyed team orders and deliberately slowed down to back the German into the drivers behind.

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Nico Rosberg believes Toto Wolff has learned a lot from the days he battled Lewis Hamilton

Managing the two Mercedes drivers that had polarized the entire team gave Toto Wolff a lot of experience, according to Nico Rosberg. The 2016 champion believes the experience from the years of ‘Silver Wars’ is helping him manage the situation within the team with Lewis Hamilton and George Russell. The former Mercedes driver believes the Austrian has probably made the rules of engagement with both his drivers clear from day 1, after experiencing toxic battles in the past.

Commenting on Toto Wolff’s team management skills, Rosberg said:

“I think Toto has learned so much from the fight Lewis and I had and managing us. That’s helping him a lot now in managing George coming into the team because it’s very difficult – you don’t want to cut his wings completely but you want to tell him ‘don’t crash into Lewis’, so it’s a very fine line. But I think Toto is getting that right brilliantly at the moment.”

While neither Hamilton nor Rosberg have forgotten the intense battle, they are often seen nowadays taking jibes at each other through the media. The animosity might have died down, but the Briton found a better friend and a non-challenging partner in Valtteri Bottas than his former teammate.