“There was $100m on the table that I gave up on”– Nico Rosberg reveals the amount of money he lost as he chose to retire instead of continuing.
Nico Rosberg made shocking headlines in 2016 after he announced to retire from Formula 1 only five days after winning the drivers’ championship with Mercedes and beating his own teammate Lewis Hamilton who was the three-time world champion back then.
Now, five years after his retirement, Rosberg reveals that he lost around $100million as he declined to extend his stay in F1 and called an end to his professional driving career.
“I wanted to avoid going out as a has-been or someone who is not wanted anymore,” he told The Times Magazine, reflecting on his decision to call it a day on his career as a driver.
“I mean, there was $100m on the table that I gave up on. I longed for a different kind of life. You don’t have flexibility when you’re racing. It was the best decision for my family – I didn’t think about the money for one second.”
High stakes in F1 ruins friendships
Rosberg also talked about his longstanding friendship with Hamilton, which started during his karting days and was massively ruined during their time together in Mercedes.
“That’s why they break up eventually, because there is so much at stake,” he said. “And they start fighting more and more and they eventually break up because there’s so much money at stake, so much recognition at stake.”
“There were the two camps, the Nico camp and the Hamilton fans,” he said. “And all the Hamilton fans were against me, of course. [Once], there were these four-year-old girls right in front of me with their dads, and they were booing me and giving me the thumbs down. ”
Their dads told them I was bad and that they needed to boo me!”
