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blorbocedes · 25 days

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resharing riddle of rosberg by Will Buxton, because OP who originally posted it deactivated, and it's a very interesting read. since WB recently talked about how he didn't like Nico until they had a breakthrough moment and he realised that's his German sense of humour, this contextualises how people perceived Nico. Buxton wrote on Nico back in 2014, which covers his early GP2 career, the 2014 F1 season and provides a fascinating insight into Nico’s character. Highlights below:

I can’t recall the first time I met Nico Rosberg. All I remember is that I despised him, everything he was and all he represented: the cock-sure, entitled, bolshy son of a world champion. No grace, no humility. Wafting in, a blur of blonde hair and arrogance. A Formula BMW champion yes, but only a few F3 wins and just three years in single seaters gave what I held to be little foundation for such seeming conceit. I disliked him intensely. It got to the point where I held such disdain for him that I would actively seek for our paths to not cross… which was fairly hard given I was PRing the championship in which he was racing. I’d simply ask someone else to grab his quotes for me. They always seemed to be able to pull more out of him anyway.

Nico Rosberg had been quick from the outset, and watching his racecraft develop as the season went on became a growing point of emotional turmoil for me. He was so impressive; seemingly effortlessly rapid and blessed with a precision that was metronomic. But I just couldn’t like him. I wished he’d been a good guy, one I could get excited about. But instead I felt huge sadness that such a wonderful talent had been given to a guy who was apparently such a Class A prat.

I recall the low point only too well. He was breezing past on his way to dinner. His team-mate Alexandre Premat had topped qualifying, and I’d used the staggeringly unoriginal press release headline of “Premat Powers to Pole.”

“Why don’t I ever “power” to anything?” he pointedly sneered as he walked past.

I looked up, trying to figure out what he was talking about. Then it hit, and I wondered why he was being so petty. The headline was simple alliteration. I had probably or would probably use “Rosberg Reigns” at some point of the season on the back of one of his wins. It was just Nico being typical Nico.

“Dick!” I whispered under my breath, just loud enough for him to hear.

Later that night, I needed to talk to his then-PR guy Karsten Streng and hopped into the ART truck to find him.

“Karsten, can we have a chat?”

Out from behind his race overalls jumped Nico.

“Oh, so you don’t want to speak to me then? Huh? What’s that all about? You’d rather speak to Karsten than to me?”

I turned on my heels and walked out.

Karsten ran after me.

“Will, man, you can’t let that get to you. You know he’s only joking, right? Just fire it straight back at him. He’ll love it. He’s really a fun guy… honestly. But if you don’t give it back to him he’ll think he’s got the high ground. He loves a challenge.”

The next day Nico sent some pithy comment my way, so I turned around, flipped him the bird and winked. “Fuck you Rosberg.”

He looked taken aback. I broke out in a cold sweat. This was not behavior becoming of the championship’s press officer. Had I just managed to ruin any relationship I might have had with the man destined to be our first champion?

A smile broke across his face, and we never had a cross word again. Indeed, we started to get on really well. At the end of the season I received a package to my home, from Monaco. In it was an ART team shirt, signed by Nico, thanking me for my support. I had it framed, and it remains one of my most treasured pieces of memorabilia from my career in racing.

Nico was the most savvy driver I ever worked with. Stepping down from the podium after winning the GP2 title, he spoke to the awaiting press in turn, each in their own language. I’d only ever seen him in individual language press briefings, and to see him utilise such cool and calm intelligence so soon after the elation of what was at the time the most meaningful moment of his career left me astounded.

But therein lies the deepest issue with Nico Rosberg. He isn’t just smart. He’s the sort of smart that makes the rest of us question if we’re quite as clever as we thought we were. And at times it can be his undoing.

I’d seen his intelligence and need for the high ground cause him trouble time and time again in interviews, even in the GP2 days. The interviewer would sit down, all smiles, ready to start the conversation. But Nico, fearful of being on the back foot, would fire retorts and wrestle control of the interview back into his own hands. He would put the interviewer at ill ease in order to make himself feel more comfortable with the situation. What resulted was a terrible interview, and the prevailing opinion of Rosberg being precisely the one I’d drawn when first we met: that he was cocky and arrogant. When I came back to journalism in 2008 I had booked a sit down with him at Williams and for the first 2 minutes of the interview, that’s exactly how he was: back against the wall, stand-offish, arrogant, unlikable. I switched off the Dictaphone and asked him if he was going to carry on being a prick or if we could do this properly. He looked sheepish, apologised, and we picked back up with what ended up being a great interview.

All of which led to a question often asked: is Nico Rosberg too smart for his own good?

It’s a question that has come back again this year.

Many will point to Monaco as a stand-out point of the season. I always felt Rosberg was smart enough to pull off that stunt in qualifying, but I never believed he was that cynical or cold. To be a world champion takes more than intelligence and speed. As I argued over Multi-21 last year, while we may hate to admit it, what marks the champions out from the also-rans is the ability to be a complete bastard when the moment arrives. In Monaco, Nico was the bastard and turned that qualifying controversy into a race win that had the ability to completely shift the tide of the season.

That it didn’t, however, is his own doing.

Lewis Hamilton is widely regarded as one of the best qualifiers in modern Formula 1. And yet, with a dominantly fast car at his disposal, he has lost the Pole Trophy to Nico Rosberg, the German amassing 10 poles to Hamilton’s seven. That metronomic precision has played into the Rosberg’s hands on many occasions this season, and more often than not it has given him the upper hand going into the race. On Saturdays at least, Rosberg has proved beyond doubt that he has the pace. But he hasn’t turned that Saturday pace on regularly enough in Sunday’s race.

Mentally, what happened in Budapest was also a tremendous shock. Hungary should never have affected him as much as it did. Perhaps it all comes down to how much brain capacity we consider Nico Rosberg as having, but that August break should have been used to move on from what he perceived as injustice, and start the second half of the season fresh and with total clarity of mind. Rosberg used all of that mindfulness, however, to focus on the negatives and came back to Spa with it still playing on his mind.

That incident on lap 2 of the 2014 Belgian Grand Prix has been poured over to frankly ridiculous degrees. To me, it was a nothing moment. Rosberg could have backed out, Hamilton could have given more room. That both went into it so pathetically ultimately resulted in the damage it did. If Rosberg had truly wanted to teach Hamilton a lesson then he should have gone in hard. That he didn’t is the only reason that Hamilton’s tyre was sliced. Any intent, and Rosberg would have snapped his front wing, bouncing it off the side of the Briton’s tyre. Hamilton would have stormed off into the distance while Rosberg was forced to switch his wing.

I argued at the time that Rosberg needed to embrace one side or the other. He needed to be a hero or a villain, because if he was neither, he risked becoming nothing. And so it emerged after the race that he had told Hamiton he had allowed the impact to happen. A step towards becoming that villain? Perhaps, but it wasn’t enough. And that’s the big sadness of his season. He has been so fast and so consistent, but his inability to pick a side and his attempts at being all things to all people has led to him being left wide open to attack from all sides.

The way he interacts with broadcast crews is an incredible illustration of this. In Monza, in speaking with me on American television he spoke in confident and unashamed tones despite his apparent dressing down by the team over Spa. With the Germans he was the same… almost bullish. And then to the British TV and radio crews, his shoulders slumped forward, his head bowed down, his tone was full of contrition and regret. What he was saying was no different to what he had told the German or international crews, but the way it was said was at total odds with how he had been just 10 seconds before.

Just as in Bahrain at that GP2 finale 10 years ago, I stood in awe. So savvy, so intelligent to his audience… but perhaps, in this instance, a reflection of him trying to be just that little bit too smart.

The thing is, he can be so charming too. He has a dry and sarcastic wit, which can sometimes be played out with a deft finesse. In America and Brazil, he started to have a very subtle jab at his championship rival by adopting Lewis Hamilton’s apparent mot du jour. In almost every interview, Rosberg would drop in a little comment about how “blessed” he felt. Shrewd. Subtle. At times, however, he can be a total child. In Hungary this year I was running from my commentary position to the GP3 podium to conduct the post race interviews. Time is tight at the best of times, but when I arrived at the swipe gates I felt an arm around my waist pulling me back. At first I thought it was an over-zealous security guard. But no. It was Nico, giggling away with a huge grin plastered across his face.

Should he be crowned 2014 Formula 1 world champion, be it through double points or, let’s hope, a barn-storming wheel-to-wheel thriller, some will still argue that Nico Rosberg does not deserve to be world champion. With them, however, I would disagree. Lest we forget, this is the only man who, over the course of a full Formula 1 season, finished ahead of Michael Schumacher as a team-mate. As if to reinforce the point, Rosberg achieved this giant toppling feat not once, but thrice.

His out-and-out pace in qualifying this year has been insurmountable. That he has won the inaugural Pole Trophy is evidence of that. So we know he has the pace, we know he has the temperament to win races, and we know that on occasion he can embrace his inner bastard and drive with the ruthlessness that sets world champions apart.

Nico Rosberg has shown repeatedly in 2014 that he possesses the attributes shared by the best of the best. We should not deny him his glory should he be confirmed as such on Sunday.

#will buxton straight up was writing how nico is a manic pixie dream girl #essential read for nicologists #nico rosberg #will buxton #nicology #longform article

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bellezaycafe · 4 months

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Get Your Shit Together - Extra; a section of a DTS Episode.

Masterlist | Part 1

genre: 2024 Season AU

pairing: there will be romance but I haven't finalised who yet. platonic! oc x literally the whole grid.

warnings: lots swearing, major car accident, mentions of broken bones, blood and hospitals. A lot of shit happens.

context: Sadie, a 20 year old university student from Melbourne, decided to take a gap year and volunteer at 2 Formula One races in different countries.

Sadie's Faceclaim: Maia Mitchell (but you can visualise her however you want :) )

comments: READ CHAPTER FOUR BEFORE READING THIS. This is an extra and is not actually thaaaat vital to the story. I just know if this happened irl, DTS would 100% make an entire episode on it. This is gonna be so strange to write because DTS is a visual format but imma try for the cool perspective. You’re gonna need a good imagination.

*Drive to Survive theme and intro*

WILL BUXTON: Silverstone, the home of formula one.

LANDO NORRIS: It’s one of my favourite tracks, I love the support we get there.

BUXTON: Our hearts were in our mouths, in 2024. The title fight was ramping up!

CHARLES LECLERC: It was close.

CARLOS SAINZ: We were fighting, but it was horrific race.

BUXTON: It ended in shambles.

OSCAR PIASTRI: I mean, I was out in lap, 5 I think, it might’ve been 6.

BUXTON: No one expected five DNF’s.

LEWIS HAMILTON: I don’t know how it happened.

BUXTON: Let alone Lando’s accident.

NORRIS: I don’t remember much.

BUXTON: or the Mystery Medic.

*dramatic pause*

BUXTON: It was incredible, in a morbid way.

NORRIS: I was panicking

*onboard footage of moments after the crash, with radio subtitles*

NORRIS *onboard radio*: MY ANKLE, **** MY FOOT!

BUXTON: First, they catch Lando as he falls from the halo. He is in pain, and at one point you can hear him scream.

*onboard footage of the Mystery Medic catching Lando as he falls from the halo*

NORRIS: I knew it was my ankle or my foot. I’d never been in so much pain.

BUXTON: The medic starts to, essentially drag, Lando towards a safe section of the barrier. We could see that it was bad. We could see how much was relying on them and leaning on them, considering that he was taller than the medic.

PIASTRI: We could see that he wasn’t even letting it touch the ground.

NORRIS: “Keep it off the ground,” they told me. They didn’t have to, I was in too much pain anyway.

BUXTON: Then Sergio Perez approaches the accident.

TOTO WOLFF: There was debris everywhere, McLaren and Mercedes.

SERGIO PEREZ: I still do not know how I did not see it.

NORRIS: I didn’t know until I was on a stretcher.

BUXTON: You can see, if you watch the replay you can see, the moment the Mystery Medic hears Checo’s car.

*footage of the Mystery Medic turning their head towards the track*

BUXTON: Put the moment into slow motion, and you can see them make the choice.

*footage of the Mystery Medic putting both hands on Lando’s waist and switching to his right side*

BUXTON: To put yourself between a driver and a Formula One car? That’s either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid.

HAMILTON: Brave.

WOLFF: Stupid.

BUXTON: Either way, I don’t think Drive to Survive can show what happened.

*footage of Perez’s Red Bull striking black and papaya debris*

BUXTON: The medic barely stumbled.

NORRIS: If I hadn’t have seen it afterwards, I wouldn’t have known. I don’t remember it happening.

BUXTON: It was horrifying! They were walking, and almost carrying Lando, with a piece of debris in their thigh.

NORRIS: I’ve watched the replay. It was headed straight for me.

BUXTON: Watching it live was… it was awful! But you couldn’t look away.

*footage of everyone in the McLaren garage watching screens with various expressions of terror*

BUXTON: You had to know if they were going to make it.

NORRIS: They saved my life. Racing is my life, and if that debris had hit my leg? We don’t know what damage it could have done.

BUXTON: But there’s a reason we call them the Mystery Medic, and it may be a feat just as incredible. They did the impossible.

*seperate shots of Sir Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen placed side by side*

BUXTON: Lewis and Max worked together. They put their rivalry aside and worked together to keep the Mystery Medic a secret and we have no idea why.

MAX VERSTAPPEN and HAMILTON *in unison*: I’m not going to comment on that.

BUXTON: We don’t know their name. We don’t know who they are, where they’re from, or how they’re doing now.

*another dramatic pause*

BUXTON: It’s like they never existed.

#f1 #f1 fic #formula 1 #formula one #max verstappen #lando norris #f1 x oc #f1 imagine #lewis hamilton #will buxton

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