How F1 hard-knocks made Nico Rosberg a 'sensitive' manager

“I mean, I was useless, I spun off on my own in last place,” Rosberg smiles. “But I was a young driver with a couple of grands prix under my belt. It’s because they are all hard-asses and they sometimes have a little bit of empathy difficulty to realise I was really sensitive as a driver and needed to feel their love.”

Clearly, you don’t forget such moments, and Rosberg has carried them into team ownership. He knows first-hand how delicate a racing driver’s confidence can be, and how crucial it is not to be crushed. “I don’t like it when a team manager puts the blame on you internally, making it clear to the whole team that you are to blame, that it’s your fault,” he says. “Because I’m very sensitive and most race drivers would be to that. You have to be so careful because driver confidence is so essential. You want to do everything you can at all times to try and keep that high. It’s the most important thing.

He pulls on a relevant and current example to support his point. “Look at Sebastian Vettel, one of the greatest drivers in our sport. The only way to possibly explain something like [what he’s going through] is that he has a mental negative spiral which he needs to find his way out of.”

So does he think the Aston Martin driver can pull himself out of his nosedive? “I have no idea,” he says. “Before the season I would say yes, but then watching the Bahrain GP… it’s strange. I don’t understand it. Anyway, the most important thing for drivers is to keep that mental confidence up. I’m trying to pick out the best of what I’ve seen and not do a Patrick Head! That was painful.”

In Kristoffersson, considered by some as the greatest rallycross driver ever and a man whose unflinching self-belief shines through in and out of the car and out of it, Rosberg has a driver you wouldn’t really describe as delicate. Rosberg knows they are not all like he was.

“If you take someone like Max Verstappen he would not be described as sensitive,” he says. “To cope with the amount of criticism he had in that one year [2018] when he made mistake after mistake, yet still remained so committed and then said ‘I’m going to headbutt you if you say that one more time’… I mean, I would have been in my cave by then!

“A Schumacher could deal with it best and was on the resilient side. It depends. And it’s not clear whether it’s a strength or weakness because a sensitive driver will question himself the most and the people who are more self-confident will see the blame in other people who work on the car. For me sensitivity was a great force in the end. I was always questioning myself, trying to find the next step, to make myself better.”

All those psychology lessons, that internal study and selfish introspection culminated in Rosberg’s 2016 championship season. Sure, Hamilton had poor luck on reliability at crucial moments, but no one can take away Rosberg’s title, hard-earned in equal machinery against one of the greatest drivers in history. Then, shattered by the experience, he walked away. However we might judge that decision – and we all have – Rosberg showed total conviction in making it. And from everything he’s said and done since, it’s a call he almost certainly will never go back on. Nico sliding into a racing car – any racing car, including his own Extreme E Odyssey 21 – is not something we are ever likely to see, beyond the odd demo event.

“The end of 2016 was the perfect moment for me, in every sense of the word,” he says. “It was beautiful for me, I achieved my dream. It was intense so I was OK with the intensity coming to an end. But it also gave me the opportunity for a second life and to be here now in Extreme E, with a social force at the heart of motor sport for the first time ever.

“There’s an opportunity. The power of sports is unbelievable and really untapped in terms of social causes. We are seeing the start with racism, Black Lives Matter, and it is starting to pick up now. But there is so much potential. We can show how it is done, and maybe the Olympics will follow us or the soccer World Cup.” There’s that evangelical mission again.

“Stopping was not easy,” he adds. “Imagine stopping your job without ever having thought about it before, and without any clue what you are going to do next. It’s the same for everybody. Change is always going to be more difficult than doing the same thing, but it can be a bigger step in the right direction for an even better life. What I’m seeing here is that if we have a chance to win something, and it looks like we do, I think I can relive some of those emotions even if I’m not in the car. That I’m looking forward to.”
Turns out he didn’t have long to wait.

The shadows are lengthening now and others are waiting to chat to Nico, in an open, friendly paddock that’s a throwback to how racing used to be. But before we bump fists and depart, one more thing: how’s your dad?

“He’s doing fine, yes,” says Nico. “He’s following every single moment. I thought I might invite him to a race, it would be nice to do a trip together.”

He doesn’t strike us as someone who cares about sustainability. “No. That’s not him.”

But he wants his grandkids to grow up in a better world? “No, I don’t think so either! He says ‘electric cars, what the f*** is that?’ But the funny thing is we’re transforming him now, we’re getting there, and if we get him the sky is the limit. He was the one that when I invested in Extreme E said ‘what the hell are you doing?’ And now he’s setting the alarm to watch the TV – and loving it.”

Racing drivers, delicate or otherwise, share the same spirit at heart. It’s in the blood.