Nico Rosberg
As the son of Keke Rosberg, Formula 1 champion in the 1982 season, Nico Rosberg, who was born in Wiesbaden and has German and Finnish citizenship, was virtually born to be in motorsport. He made his first acquaintance with a kart at the age of 6. At 11, he began to compete in this beginners' class. Over the course of the following five years, Rosberg impressively demonstrated his exceptional talent in the kart.
Optimally supported by his environment, Nico's path to the higher realms of formula racing was clearly marked out. In 2002, when he was just 17 years old, he started in the German Formula BMW for his father's team. Coming from a karting background, he had no problems adjusting and immediately won the championship title. In the same year, he was allowed to do a few laps in a Williams Formula 1 car for testing purposes.
Rosberg's career also continued to progress without any detours or byways. As early as 2003, he took part in the Formula 3 Euro Series, once again racing for his father's team. Nico managed a race win and, with several podium finishes and other appealing results, an eighth place in the overall standings of this extremely competitive junior series.
In order to sharpen his Formula 3 skills emphatically, he hit a high pace and started directly afterwards in the Spanish Formula 3 winter series 2003/2004, which he promptly won. In his immediately following second season in the Formula 3 Euro Series, which he now contested with a German racing licence instead of a Finnish one, he finished fourth in the final standings with three race wins and a series of top placings. As a further appetiser, he was again allowed to complete test drives in the Williams Formula 1 car in both years.
Rosberg pursued new goals in 2005. He left his father's Formula 3 team and joined the newly founded GP2 series for the French team ART Grand Prix. He immediately found his feet there and won five races during the season. Together with seven other podium finishes and other placings in the front field, he already secured the championship in his premiere year.
The logical completion of this unusually straightforward and focused career path was his entry into Formula 1 in 2006. Rosberg was given a seat next to Mark Webber at Williams and was able to gain experience in the premier class in his first season. He managed to finish in the top ten five times; highlights were the two seventh places in Bahrain and at the European Grand Prix at the Nürburgring. At the end of the season, Rosberg had four championship points to his name.
Continuity and reliability characterised the further Formula 1 career of the Wiesbaden native. He remained with Williams for the next three years, improving to ninth in the drivers' world championship in 2007 with 20 world championship points, but suffered a slight setback in 2008. Although he fell to 13th place with 17 points in the drivers' table, he was able to celebrate two podium finishes during the season: he finished third at the season opener in Australia and even took second place at the Singapore Grand Prix. The following year, his last at Williams, Rosberg climbed to seventh overall in the drivers' championship.
In 2010, a new phase in Rosberg's career as a Formula 1 driver began with his move to the newly formed Mercedes GP Petronas F1 Team. At Michael Schumacher's side, he initially struggled to bring the factory team and himself to the top of the premier class until the end of the 2012 season. He was consistently faster than the record world champion and took his first Grand Prix victory and pole position in the last of the three years. Rosberg's victory also meant the first win by a Mercedes Formula 1 team since 1955.
In the 2013 season, the last under the old engine formula, the arrival of Lewis Hamilton as a new team-mate significantly increased the intensity of competition within the factory team. With two Grand Prix wins, a second and a third place, Rosberg now improved to sixth in the drivers' world championship, but had to concede defeat to his old rival Hamilton, with whom he had to contend time and again in the early days of his career.
The new engine formula in force from the 2014 season, which provided for 1.6-litre V6 turbo engines with a two-part energy recovery system, permanently changed the balance of power in Formula One. The Mercedes Grand Prix team dominated the scene at will from the very beginning and during the following years turned the fight for the drivers' crown into a battle between Rosberg and his British opponent from their own ranks. Hamilton won the title by a clear margin in 2014 and 2015, relegating his German team-mate to second place on both occasions.
in 2016, however, Rosberg was able to turn the tables and, after a mental and driving tour de force in the last race of the season, became Formula 1 World Champion with a five-point lead over the Briton. Shortly after the hard-fought title win, he declared his retirement from Grand Prix racing. His track record of 206 starts in the premier class included 57 podiums, of which 23 were wins, and 30 pole positions. After Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel, Rosberg was the third German Formula 1 World Champion since 1994.