Barcelona: Savvy student Nico Rosberg is happy to do the extra technical homework required as he has roared to the top of this year’s drivers’ world championship with a run of four straight wins.
The 30-year-old German has praised the new direction of Formula One thanks to restrictions on the use of drivers’ team radio and a need for more individual initiative and pre-race preparation.
In what could be seen as a thinly-veiled jab at his Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton’s more ‘laissez-faire’ approach to racing, the championship-leader said the ban on radio instructions meant that drivers could no longer rely on other people’s guidance alone.
Speaking ahead of this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Catalunya, set in the industrial hinterland north of Barcelona, he said the ban had ended an era of “muppets” at the wheel.
He told Autosport that television viewers had stopped thinking that “we looked like ‘muppets’ directed by our engineers on radio.”
Under this year’s rules, they must now drive the cars “alone and unaided”, a move that defending three-time champion Hamilton said would make his job more difficult.
It will be “a lot harder,” the Briton said before the season began.
Rosberg has reeled off four straight wins this year to pull clear at the top of the drivers’ world championship ahead of Hamilton who has suffered a series of misfortunes including successive engine failures.
“I like the direction because, now, we’re more on our own,” said the meticulous and well-educated Rosberg, who turned down a chance to study aeronautical engineering at Imperial College, London before becoming a racing driver.
“Now, what’s more important is pre-race preparation where we work more intensely together through all the different things that my engineer can’t tell me in a race.
“There’s more focus on that. It’s more intense and complex. In the race, it’s good. We’re out there, we get the job done ourselves and it’s a real challenge. I like it.”
Hamilton, who struggled through his school days, has always said he enjoys being allowed to wring all the speed possible out of his car as a driver by maximising on his pure talents as a racing driver.
