Rosberg: “I would have won the race”
While leading when his gearbox problems worsened, Nico Rosberg had to retire during the 2014 British Grand Prix of F1, leaving the way clear for his main rival, Lewis Hamilton. He believes he would have won the race without this issue.
After a good start and an excellent restart, Nico Rosberg seemed well-positioned to compete for the victory at the 2014 British Grand Prix, despite a keen Lewis Hamilton behind him. However, the battle never truly took place as the German had to retire on the 29th lap due to a gearbox problem.
Interviewed by our colleagues from Crash.net in the interview zone, the driver with number 6 believes he would have won this Grand Prix: « I am confident that I would have won the race, yeah. » A few laps after the race restart, Rosberg had up to a 5-second lead over his teammate.
He explains that the troubles started very early before gradually getting worse: « There was something before departure or just after that was surprising, and then, after that, it got increasingly worse. It would go into neutral a few times so I had to release the clutch and start again, and then it got worse and worse. »
His concern forced him to rethink his race plan and focus on reliability: « I found myself in a situation where my mindset changed and I thought: ”OK, stop racing against Lewis and just try to bring this thing home somehow.” I had such an advantage in terms of pace, I could do some pretty radical things to try to preserve the gearbox, but as soon as it was mechanical, there was really nothing I could do, from our perspective. »
Despite everything, he still leads the championship even though the gap has narrowed from 29 to 4 points: « Yeah, that’s true. It’s hard to find something positive today, but starting tomorrow, I’ll try to do it! Yes, it’s a fact: I’m leading the championship before heading to my home race and that’s a good thing. »
