Nico Rosberg: The man in the other Mercedes

Here's a really good guest post on Nico Rosberg by Ollie Harden, enjoy!

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The former world champion, tearing the velcro of his comfort zone; diving into the deep end of a pond of underachievement; leaping into the yearning arms of Ross Brawn; his eyes set on dragging the sleeping oaf of a giant to distinguished glory.

It is a rubber-laid road. 

Lewis Hamilton’s path to Brackley contains remarkable similarities to the stroll of Michael Schumacher’s towards Maranello exactly seventeen years ago.

Amid the resonating shockwaves of Hamilton’s move, you would be forgiven for assuming that the Silver Arrows tag has been stripped of its pluralism.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, considering how the Brawn-Schumacher relationship transfigured at Ferrari: there was only one stable available for a Prancing Horse; the unloved grazer, in the other car, was handed little more than shelter.  

But how will the Brawn-Hamilton alliance handle the man that, for the best part of three years, conquered the King?

How Nico Rosberg performs in contrast to the heir, you feel, will make or break a career that - despite its seven-year existence - still paces between the gates of purgatory. 

Does the German hold the qualities required to challenge the Vettel’s and Alonso’s of this world? Or is he merely a reliable pair of hands, comfortably performing within the limits of his machinery?

He had assumed he had provided the answer to that dilemma as he crossed the line in Shanghai. 

There was a Vettel-esque nature to the way Rosberg seemingly streaked to pole position, delivering the most gorgeously, aggressively precise lap of the year; a lap that left his seven-time world championship-winning ally speechless.    

Rosberg continued to adopt the persona of his Red Bull countryman the following day, dashing from threat in the early stages of the Grands Prix before maintaining the sizeable margin between himself and his rivals. 

The most impressive aspect of Rosberg’s win, however, was his calming influence on his team who, prior to the race, suffered nightmares of charred rear tyres. Rosberg’s displayed great leadership and maturity as his reserved aggression soothed the pounding nerves of Mercedes as well as his own rubber to take one of the most assured victories of 2012. 

The predicament resuscitated the memories of Vettel’s car management in Spa 2011, with the tension, the expectation of failure, so overwhelming that it moved Adrian Newey to tears as his car crossed the line.

Rosberg’s yells of joyous relief via team radio told the story of a man who had finally rid his back of an itching, weighty monkey.

You could almost hear the click of a change of mindset - an uplifting of confidence, a rise of expectation - a month later in Bahrain, as the new kid on the winners block swiped, first towards Lewis Hamilton, and later Fernando Alonso, in brinksmanship defensive manoeuvres. 

“How dare they even attempt to overtake me?”, fumed Rosberg as he found himself brushing sidepods with the McLaren and Ferrari. 

Would he have committed to such flamboyantly risky move had he not taken the spoils in China just weeks earlier? 

You suspect not. 

The worry for Rosberg, ahead of his war with Hamilton, is that such levels of performance were not sustained, that the edge of his driving was blunted in synchronisation with Mercedes’ decline of competitiveness, allowing a forty-three-year-old to frequently beat him.

Although, you cannot help but feel the German’s battle with the 2008 world champion will not only be won on-track.

Rosberg will look to force an atmosphere upon his new teammate that Hamilton should have created around Jenson Button in 2010. He must use his three-year experience of Mercedes life to his advantage, forming a peacefully claustrophobic - but not poisonous – vibe, which Button mustered at McLaren from the summer of 2011.

Button’s handling of Hamilton is, in fact, a perfect template for Rosberg to sketch upon his own drawing board of intra-team supremacy. Like the 2009 world champion, the German would be well-served to quickly accept that he is unlikely to topple his new teammate in naked performance alone. 

Look at the marriage of Hamilton and Button: the statistics, marginal; the moral victory, astronomical.

Rosberg, multi-tongued with great intelligence, must imitate Button’s communicative skills, loveable charm and political awareness to plant bombs of doubt, unbalance and homelessness in the mind of a teammate that carries a tendency to self-destruct. 

Even if those bombs were not to explode, even if he were to be trounced by Hamilton on multiple occasions, Rosberg would consolidate his position, would heighten his worth, at Mercedes-Benz. A likeable, trouble-free persona, after all, is what has seen Felipe Massa extend his Ferrari career for another one more year.

It is hard not to feel a touch of sympathy for Rosberg, for he has not once been considered The Man of Mercedes, the leader of the team. In January, he will swap a life of answering questions about his teammate for a life of answering even more questions about his teammate.

To rival Hamilton, Nico Rosberg must not only use his entire repertoire but eagerly seek to extend it, partly by committing the racing drivers’ sin of learning from his fellow competitors, moulding a complete, dynamic package. 

There is little doubt that he possesses the supreme intellect needed to undertake a mission which requires widespread, yet conflicting, qualities. But does Rosberg have the openness, the flexibility of pride, the improvisation, to sacrifice a battle or two, but to eventually win the war?

Perhaps that is the hardest question of all.