Nico Rosberg: An Emerging Force
Born on 27 June, 1985, in Wiesbaden, Germany, to veteran Formula One driver and 1982 world champion Keke, Nico Rosberg resolved from a young age to take a leaf out of his father’s book and aspired to emulate his considerable achievements as a gifted race car driver. Rosberg first tried his hand at kart racing at the age of six, and became an instant convert. However for much of his youth, Rosberg fiddled his enthusiasm for motor racing with another of his fervent passions-tennis.
The German quickly established himself as a potent karting force at the local, French and international level before progressing to single-seater cars after spending five years in the highest echelons of the kart racing arena. Here the seventeen year old rookie white washed his Formula BMW adversaries and triumphed at the championship after winning nine races. Rosberg’s impressive showmanship was remunerated in 2002 with a test drive for the BMW Williams squad. It was a run that would make Rosberg the youngest driver ever to have a sprint with a Formula One car. Rosberg’s impassioned displays in Barcelona, Spain acquired the German two more opportunities to impress-in Jerez towards the end of the 2003 season and in Barcelona in early 2004.
The 2003 season had seen Rosberg advance to the Formula 3 Euroseries where he competed for the Team Rosberg owned by his father. Although his two year stint at the competition yielded considerable success, Rosberg’s struggle for a second championship title proved to be largely unproductive. Regardless, Nico was determined to climb the uphill ladder and in 2005 he made a switch to the GP2 Series, a competition he would take by storm. At the age of just 20, the animated German triumphed five times in the series and outshined Heikki Kovalainen, the aspiring Renault apprentice to notch the initial GP2 title.
Williams saw it fit to grant the newly heralded champion a Formula One race seat for the 2006 competition alongside Australia’s Mark Webber. Rosberg vindicated Frank William’s trust in style by grabbing the seventh position in his inaugural race at the Bahrain Grand Prix and beating the usual suspects Ferrari, Renault and McLaren to accomplish the swiftest lap of the competition.
However further into the 2006 season, the William’s machine’s palpable inferiority and newcomer Nico’s relative unfamiliarity with racing at the very summit of the motorsport world downplayed the German’s god-given skill on a number of occasions. Rosberg found himself in the midst of numerous mishaps on track, most memorably in the season’s ultimate race at the Brazilian event.
Yet Rosberg resolved to ensure his suffering did not go in vain as he emerged in resurgent form for the following 2007 season, clearly showing he was in no mood for a repeat of last year’s blunders. Nico outperformed his much seasoned teammate Alex Wurz, clinched the majority of his teams’ points and managed to finish fourth at the season’s final race in Brazil. Rosberg mirrored his rapid upward thrust in the 2008 season after finishing third at the Australian event and ending runner-up in Singapore in spite of the frustrations affected by his rather unpredictable Williams FW30.
Unfortunately, despite clinching all of William’s points for the 2009 season, Rosberg was not able to translate these meaningful accumulations into a podium position. During the year the German had managed to reserve his position amongst the 8 highest ranked players in the standings 11 times and abandoned the race on one isolated occasion only once (a technical breakdown). Rosberg was assured that with the competent equipment he could take his performance to a wholly new level and quite unsurprisingly, at the end of the 2009 season the German announced his time with Williams was finally up.
Rosberg ultimately joined the Mercedes Brawn team for the 2010 competition where he has managed to outperform seven- time champion teammate Michael Schumacher for much of the season and currently holds 74 points behind Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel in the overall driver’s standings.
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