– Nico Rosberg was the last driver in Formula 1 history to have Michael Schumacher as a teammate. From 2010 to 2012, the two Germans drove together for the then-new Mercedes team.
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Now Rosberg has given detailed insights in the High Performance podcast into the psychological tricks the record world champion used back then to gain an internal team advantage.
For example, Schumacher regularly played psychological games when choosing parking spots at the tracks. “Michael simply parked his car slightly offset in my parking spot. So two wheels just over the white line, so I couldn’t fit in anymore,” explains Rosberg.
Psychological games were in Schumacher’s blood
“That stresses me out, of course, because I arrive late to the meeting. You always arrive one minute before the engineer meeting,” says Rosberg. “It’s the worst to be one minute late when everyone, even the factory, 50 people in the factory, are all online and it says: ‘Sorry, we’re just waiting for Nico.’ Terrible.”
According to Rosberg, dealing with the teammate was a constant mental strain, which Schumacher, however, mastered completely intuitively. “He is a mental warrior, this guy,” Rosberg recalls. “He lives and breathes to mentally destroy his teammate, but not in a mean way, rather in a relaxed gray area, using the gray areas as daily strength. It was just natural for him.”
Photo series: Michael Schumacher: The Mercedes years
According to Rosberg, Schumacher didn’t even have to try to build this pressure. It was simply his way of life. A particularly extreme example of these mental tactics, Rosberg experienced during a qualifying in Monte Carlo.
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The mean toilet trick before qualifying
Before getting into the car, drivers usually take the opportunity for a last bathroom break. Schumacher used this to block the only toilet in the Mercedes garage.
“He locks himself in and looks at his watch. Time is ticking, and he knows that it is the worst to get stressed getting into a race car because you have to adjust your seat belts,” says Rosberg. A faulty fit of the belts, especially in the crotch area, can lead to extreme pain during the race, as corrections during the drive are impossible.
Rosberg describes the situation in the garage as follows: “I knock on the door and don’t know who’s inside because no one speaks. ‘Come out. Come out. Come out, please. I have to go.’ And he knows: ‘OK, three more minutes. Two more minutes.’ Until then, I had to find a bucket at the back of the garage to pee in, honestly. So I stand there where the mechanics are working around me and pee in a bucket, trembling, stressed. It went on like that all day. He loved it.”
Despite this tough schooling, Rosberg managed to assert himself well in the three years together at the Silver Arrows. In the 2010, 2011, and 2012 seasons, he was able to score more points overall than Schumacher each time, laying the foundation for his later career, which culminated in the world championship title in 2016.
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