Nico Rosberg

Nico Rosberg married his childhood friend Vivian Sibold, after being engaged to her for many years. She was a family friend and the couple tied the knot in July 2014 and welcomed a baby girl into the family in August 2015. Vivian has said that Nico was always a family man and felt guilty about not being able to spend enough time with them. So, in a way, it can be said that his retirement resulted from a desire to spend more time with his family.

Nico also said that the decision to take permanent retirement wasn’t easy, he talked with his wife openly about that and finally reached the decision of taking retirement after giving it a hard thinking.

Nico Rosberg was born in Wiesbaden, West Germany, on 27th June 1985, in a prolific Formula One family. His father Keke Rosberg has been a F1 World Champion in 1982. Despite being Keke’s son, Rico was a severely under-confident kid and didn’t believe that he could be as great a racer as his father. Although his interest in the sport was apparent since a very young age, he was never sure about his career path during most of his teenage.

At the age of 6, he was introduced to the world of Karting and he immediately got hooked. His parents didn’t wish him to sabotage his studies in the the pursuit of becoming an F1 racer, so he studied hard and was known to be a quick learner in mid and high school. He could speak German, French, Italian, Spanish and English fluently in school and all the teachers were in awe of him.

At the age of 10, Nico began with Kart racing tournaments and with the right guidance from his father, he slowly championed it. He admits joyfully that he used to compete with his father and whenever his father beat him in tennis, he would cry. This spirit encouraged him to try harder and surpass his father. His father became his manager, which helped Nico greatly in his later professional career.

Nico started his big leagues Formula One career with Williams in the 2006 season in a race in Bahrain. Although, he was signed on as a test driver, he performed well enough to impress the staff at Williams. Apart from that, the entire season went bad for his team and him. The next season was somewhat better, and Nico finished many races to stand at either sixth or seventh spot in most of season’s Grand Prix’.

At the 2008 Australian Grand Prix, Nico surprised everyone with his impressive performance and ended up on the third spot. One other big moment came in the Singapore Grand Prix that year, where he led the race for some time, before finishing it on the second position. The next year was good as well; Nico went on to enter the top 5 positions in Hungarian and European Grand Prix’. However, after the 2009 season, Nico bid goodbye to Williams stating the reason that their resources aren’t efficient enough to win races, and signed a contract with Mercedes.

Nico started with Mercedes with a race in Malaysia in the 2010 season, where he finished third but he struggled to perform in most of the Grand Prix races that year. But his luck took a drastic turn in the 2012, when Nico scored his first career win in the Chinese Grand Prix, and became the first German driver to win a Grand Prix while driving a German car, a feat which wasn’t achieved in more than 8 decades.

In the 2013 season, Nico finished fourth at the Malaysian Grand Prix and went on to win the British Grand Prix, defeating his teammate Lewis Hamilton in a close encounter. He went on to earn the second position in India and third in Abu Dhabi. Somehow, his team favoured Hamilton and directed Nico not to overtake Hamilton in the Malaysian Grand Prix, which snatched a seemingly possible victory from his clutches.

At the beginning of the 2014 season, Nico emerged first at the Australian Grand Prix and subsequently in the following races of the season; he finished second, mostly behind his teammate Hamilton. Constant technical issues followed him in many of the races, which resulted into disappointment. Although he secured a victory in Brazil, he remained second to Hamilton in points tally at the end of the season, losing the world championship. Later in an interview, he praised Hamilton and said that Lewis Hamilton did a better job than him.