Nico Rosberg recalled how he was left with a six-figure sum to pay after he and then Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton collided. Rosberg and Hamilton became Mercedes team-mates back in 2013, but their friendship would degrade into a bitter rivalry over the coming years as they battled for World Championship supremacy in the dominant Mercedes machinery.
Nico Rosberg paid out £360,000 after Lewis Hamilton crash
The rivalry did not play out exclusively between the drivers, with tension spreading throughout the team to the point where after Rosberg retired soon after winning the 2016 title, team boss Toto Wolff vowed never to allow such a toxic situation to develop again.
And Rosberg would discuss one of the methods used by Mercedes in an effort to control this rivalry with Hamilton, that being to make the drivers contractually obliged to pay the repair bill after any incidents which they caused between them.
It was a clause which was put to use too, as Rosberg recalled the “very painful” experience of parting with £360,000 after one of his comings together with Hamilton.
Rosberg revealed on the Business of Sport podcast: “Lewis and I crashed and in the end the team made us pay compensation.” “We had to enter into a contract saying that in the future, if an accident were to occur, we would be liable for the damages, no matter who was at fault.In one of these accidents we had to pay out £360,000. “I remember it was very painful. After that, we tried not to collide again.”
Interestingly, by this point Rosberg was well aware of how painful it would be to bear the costs of accident damage himself, and the first salary he earned as a test driver for Williams was replaced by his first salary in GP2.
It was revealed that the money was used to repay a loan for repairing the accident. Published in the same year in 2005. “As soon as the $80,000 was in my account, it was gone again, because my father took out a loan to pay for an accident I had in F2,” Rosberg said. “We had an accident there, which destroyed the front wing and front section, costing us 80,000 yen. Our goal at the time was to not have to pay for the race ourselves, but to finance it through sponsors. But of course there was no crash. So we had to borrow money from the bank, and our first paycheck went right back to the bank to cover it.”
After losing this title to Rosberg in 2016, Hamilton added four more world titles to his resume, taking his total to seven, a record. With 2024 being his final season with Mercedes, Hamilton’s quest for that elusive eighth title is likely to continue into a new chapter of his F1 career with Ferrari.
