Nico Rosberg

Nico Erik Rosberg, son of Keijo "Keke" Erik Rosberg, is about to have his 100th Grand Prix meeting this weekend in Hungary.

I was about to write my "best wishes" to him in 'his' thread...but I couldn't find one...so, I figured I might as well start it off.

What is very interesting is that his father, Keke, took part in 114 Grand Prix races in his entire Formula One career, winning 5 of them - all for Williams from 1982 to 1985 - as well as a World Championship.

It's interesting in that Nico is approaching that number quickly and he's already about to finish off his 6th season in a few months...but without a win to his name...and no win in sight given the current pecking order of the cars.

Some say Nico is a great talent...while others say he hasn't fared well against quality teammates in their prime, so it's hard to judge. Mark Webber is, seemingly, his only reasonable benchmark and that was way back in his rookie season in a car that was one of the worst ones ever constructed by Williams.

What are people's thoughts on Nico Rosberg?

Regardless, Godspeed to Nico on the occassion of his 100th Grand Prix this weekend!

 

[Jen]

No sponsor; then no team nor driver.

 

[Hamberg]

Bit of a gutting race but still the WDC leader. I'm seeing a passion and fight I've not seen before. He's mature, he's hungry and he wants this. Nico ladies and gentleman may be our 2014 WDC and I (and KekeTheKing) will be bloody delighted!

 

[RasputinLives]

Nico looked pissed off on the podium. I think we're going to see him start to.play harder and harder as the season goes on.

Still don't think he'll beat Lewis over a season though.

 

[sushifiesta]

Given the car Mercedes have, Nico must be pretty disappointed to have only qualified on the front row in one out of four attempts.

 

[no-FIAt-please]

Poor weekend from Rosberg at a circuit he is typically strong at. It was the car that saved him and his championship lead today. He was even lucky that the Bottas incident didn't take him out. Still onwards and upwards, Spain is his best bet to get level with Hamilton with it being the only race Hamilton didn't score points at last season on merit.

 

[KekeTheKing]

It's easy to forget that Nico had no telemetry, which severely compromised his start, and was also required to repeatedly report information that even FOM was privy too. But as I've already said, his fate was sealed on Saturday (providing that Hamilton had a trouble free GP), and that qualifying is where he can get on top of Lewis.

 

[Josh]

How would having no telemetry influence his start? On the warmup lap, he said his start was perfect.

(serious question)

 

[FB]

I think it affected the early part of the race as he couldn't push as hard as he hard as maybe he might have been able to and the team weren't able to monitor the fuel flow. That said the other Merc was rapidly running away form the rest of the field but Nico was making no impression on the cars in front of him.

 

[KekeTheKing]

How would having no telemetry influence his start? On the warmup lap, he said his start was perfect.

(serious question)

I guess it was this quote from Lauda that made me think that, "The telemetry on Nico's car failed on the way to the grid, which is tough for him because you don't know where the clutch bite point is, and [that] his start was not perfect is understandable."

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/113595

But elsewhere in the article is says it shouldn't have been an issue at the start.

Basically my point was that it wasn't an ideal weekend in just about every aspect.

 

[Jos the Boss]

Nico knew his fuel flow as he was reading it out to the team, so surely that can't have compromised much?

 

[FB]

I'm open to correction but wasn't he just telling the team how much fuel was left rather than details of the flow itself? The rules don't allow the flow to exceed 100kg/hr at any point in the race so perhaps he had to keep his right foot under control?

 

[Mephistopheles]

Actually the FIA were getting fuel flow reading telemetry from Nico's car as could be seen on your TV screens and as was mentioned by the commentators, the team could see the same info we were getting but for some reason they were not receiving their own telemetry...

Don't ask me I'm just a bloke who sits in my front room watching it on telly...

 

[Lewywo4]

Basically my point was that it wasn't an ideal weekend in just about every aspect.

Especially in the way that Lewis was performing, and as ToTo Wolff said, " From the beginning, Lewis a man on his own planet looking quicker than everyone else, and making the tyres last longer than we thought."

 

[Fenderman]

Surely the driver "feels" for the clutch bite point? When everything is down to 1000'ths of a second waiting for pit wall to confirm one had found it would be somewhat risky to say the least. I'd say the lack of feedback from pit wall regarding temperatures of tyres and brakes would have been the main problem. Since they had no way of knowing how good those were they couldn't issue instructions to ensure the boots and brakes were good for the start. Likewise other things such as the energy available from the ERS might be something where lack feedback to give the driver could be a problem if the driver has to do anything to boost the system. More reading on my part required on that one, methinks.

 

[Road of Bones]

Fenderman - racing clutches are so stiff that they're more like on/off switches (at least the one I tried was). You need software to detect the optimum bite-point, as it's too minute to detect with a paddle behind the steering wheel, I suspect.

 

[Fenderman]

That was my first thought Road of Bones but then I thought about the delay between the engineer seeing it was reached and relaying that back to the driver. I also thought about the fact that we can see the drivers test for the bite point because there is a visible lurch forward as they find it. It's very rare in F1 these days that drivers stall on the grid because of the anti-stall and I suspect that that is where the software detection comes in.

 

[Mephistopheles]

The First Time ever I saw your, face,,
I thought the sun,, rose in your eyes,,,,,,,,,,,,,
And the moon,,,, and the stars,, were the gifts you gave,
To the dark and the empty skies,,

 

[sushifiesta]

Rosberg looks closer and closer to breaking point every time Hamilton beats him in qualifying/the race. If results continue to go in Lewis' favour I suspect it won't be long until we see some sort of emotional explosion because the demons bubbling under the surface are becoming clearer and clearer to see.

 

[Jen]

Rubbish.

 

[Greenlantern101]

I can't see him having a tantrum off track. Doing something desperate on track is more likely.