Nico Rosberg had to pay his team for the cost of accidents with Lewis Hamilton

In an interview for the Business of Sport podcast, Nico Rosberg revealed that he had to spend £360,000 (approximately 420,000 euros) for damages following an accident with his former teammate at Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton.

Rosberg and Hamilton had several points of friction during a fierce rivalry for the title, they were teammates at Mercedes, the team that dominated between 2014 and 2016. The peak occurred at the Spanish Grand Prix in 2016.

The two drivers collided while fighting for the lead, heading towards turn 4, eliminating the chance of victory for Mercedes and paving the way for Max Verstappen who secures the win in his first race for Red Bull.

According to Rosberg, he and Hamilton were contractually obliged to pay for the repair bill for any accident caused between them. « Because Lewis and I crashed, finally the team made us pay for the damages »,” says Rosberg.

We had to sign a contract stating that from now on, if we crashed, regardless of fault, we would pay for the damages. I remember how much I had to pay, it was £360,000 that I paid for one of these accidents. It was very painful. We made sure never to crash again after that.

This was not the first time for Rosberg

Indeed, it was not the first time that Nico Rosberg was forced to spend his own money to pay for damages caused by an accident. The German driver recalled how one of his paychecks when he was a test driver at Williams had been used to pay for repairs after an accident in GP2 in 2005.

As soon as the £80,000 arrived in my account, they immediately left because my father had taken out a loan to pay for the damages from my Formula 2 accident at the time. I crashed my car, and my front wing and the front were destroyed, costing £80,000.

« The goal was for him not to finance my race. We really tried to finance everything through sponsors. Except it didn’t include the big crash. So I had to take out a bank loan. So my first salary went to cover that. »