Former Mercedes mechanic reveals the SECRET advantage that helped Nico Rosberg win the 2016 F1 title over Lewis Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton lost out on the 2016 F1 title by an extremely small margin of five points.

Former Mercedes mechanic reveals the SECRET advantage that helped Nico Rosberg win the 2016 F1 title over Lewis Hamilton

Nico Rosberg (Credits: MaxF1.Net)

Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg were former teammates on the Mercedes F1 team, and the latter could even win the Championship in 2016 ahead of the other. While that happened several seasons ago, former Mercedes and McLaren mechanic Sam Michael has revealed why Rosberg got the better of Hamilton in 2016.

Sam Michael, while speaking on the Beyond the Grid podcast said, “I never worked with them together in the same team. But the ultimate result is they raced against each other, and Lewis statistically was faster, more times. But the huge advantage that Nico had over any driver was he was technically very smart.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Azxnaub_c7Y

“He was really good at understanding the car, and understanding how the engineering worked, and he used that to his advantage to win the Championship in 2016.” Michaels has made it known that Nico Rosberg’s technical understanding of the car was superior to all the other F1 drivers, including Lewis Hamilton.

While he has admitted that statistically, the Brit was faster than Rosberg, the latter has the edge over him on the technical side. He sees this as the main reason why Nico Rosberg was able to shock the world during the 2016 season of Formula 1. He won the title by a small margin of five points.

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Lewis Hamilton wants to win a record-breaking eighth World Championship

Lewis Hamilton
Lewis Hamilton

While Nico Rosberg decided to call it quits at the pinnacle of motor racing after winning the 2016 F1 World Championship, Lewis Hamilton is still going strong. He has been stuck at seven titles for quite a few years, and desperately wants to become the out-and-out record holder. He currently shares it with Ferrari legend Michael Schumacher.

2020 was the last year Lewis Hamilton won the Championship, and since then, it has been a bit of a struggle. The new regulations have not been kind to Mercedes, and the team has since found it extremely tough to resolve its problems. Moreover, it seems highly unlikely that Hamilton would be able to fight for the title this year.

Considering everything, the best bet for Lewis Hamilton to have a serious go at the Championship will come during the 2024 season. He has admitted that he wants Mercedes to be a title challenger from day one next year, and it would be interesting to see whether Mercedes’s car would perform as per his expectation.

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