Rosberg Dismisses Russell Over Hamilton Favoritism Theories

Monday, 16 December 2024 at 10:00

Nico Rosberg, a former F1 driver and Lewis Hamilton's teammate, dismissed speculations about the unequal treatment of Mercedes drivers in 2024.

Lewis Hamilton finished his 12-season-long run with Mercedes at the 2024 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. He is contracted to the team until the end of the year, but as soon as 2025 begins, the seven-time World Champion can head to his new team - Ferrari.

Ferrari is one of Mercedes's main rivals, and when the 39-year-old's move was announced at the start of the season, many experts suggested that the German team would need to start hiding some information from Hamilton so he doesn't take them to Ferrari.

In 2024, the seven-time world champion was out-qualified by his teammate like never before in his career. The final score between him and Russell was 6-24 (including sprint qualifying).

Ultimately, Hamilton finished the 2024 season in P7, 23 points behind the 26-year-old, and in terms of race results, he lost 10-20 (including sprint races).

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The 39-year-old's fans are not used to seeing him being outperformed so much so they started forming theories throughout the season that the two drivers did not receive equal treatment.

Former F1 driver and 2009 champion Jenson Button previously stated that preferring and giving better machinery to Russell would not make sense for Mercedes, and 2016 Champion Nico Rosberg agrees. He told Sky F1 podcast:

"Oh no, I'm pretty sure they didn't. I'm pretty sure they didn't favor George. One of the best times to see that was Toto Wolff's [team boss] comment in the race [Abu Dhabi], when Lewis came out of the box and he was 14 seconds behind George."

"He said, 'So how many seconds?' And Bono [Pete Bonnington, Hamilton's race engineer] said 14."

"And Lewis said, 'Geez, that's far down the road.' And Toto came on the radio and said, 'You can do this, Lewis.'"

"This is talking about the teammates! 'Oh, Lewis, you can do this!' If I was George and I listened back on this, I'd be like, 'Toto, Hey, what's up with that? You should be neutral here.'"

So, while Hamilton might have been left out of some meetings towards the end of the season, Rosberg's point is that the team still doesn't favor Russell over him. His example from Abu Dhabi would actually suggest otherwise.

"So that's because they were under a lot of pressure, the team, because a lot of fans, every time Lewis gets beaten by George, a lot of fans are like, 'Oh, this is sabotage.'"

"There's such a tension on there, and it would have been really, really bad on Mercedes if there would have been any, any preference going towards George."

"That's why Mercedes could never allow themselves and they went to a big extent to actually prove and keep showing that there was no preferential treatment."