Nico Rosberg on his new life: “I need structure”
In the new issue of ZEITmagazin MANN, Nico Rosberg, who surprisingly retired after winning the Formula One World Championship, talks about life after professional sport: “I feel really free. Whenever I looked at my calendar over the last twenty years, everything was precisely timed from January to December. And when I open my calendar now, there isn’t a lot. Sometimes there are blocks of absolutely nothing. Fantastic!”
But Rosberg doesn’t just want to take each day as it comes: “I feel most comfortable when I have a plan, and that is still the case today. I approach every free day in a disciplined way. If I didn’t do this, I would drown in YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, and then I would be completely gaga by the evening. I need structure. A free day for me begins at 8 a.m. with meditation, then I do one hour of exercise. Then I divide up my day into family time, office time and so on. This is the only way I feel good.”
On his life-long rivalry with Lewis Hamilton, Rosberg says: “This was simply extreme for the two of us. Each of us always wanted to be better than the other, even when it came down to eating pizza: we both wanted to eat one piece more than the other. Completely over the top.” Rosberg says that it’s also not so easy to keep out of his rival’s way: “We still live in the same house, right next door. Lewis copied me there: I was already living there when he moved in. He must have thought: Where Nico lives, that has to be the best, so I’ll move there too. (…) There are lots of apartments in the house, so we don’t run into each other that often.”
About what it’s like to be the son of Formula One World Champion Keke Rosberg, Nico Rosberg says: “It was often just difficult because people talked about it all the time, because everyone asked what it was like to be the ‘son of’. Once you have heard this a hundred times, it starts to get on your nerves. And the expectations are very high.” For this reason he also sympathises with Michael Schumacher’s son: “Look at Mick Schumacher, the son of Michael Schumacher: I just read somewhere that he was a favourite for the Formula Three title. And he is only in his first year! Lewis was fifth in his first year in Formula 3. In my opinion you need two years to be successful there. And if it’s already being written that Mick is the favourite, then he can only disappoint. That’s tough. I have a lot of sympathy for him because I know what it’s like. I can only hope that he takes after his father and attaches no importance to it.”
Please indicate the source “ZEITmagazin MANN”. The new edition is published on Tuesday, 14 March 2017; its copy price is 8.50 euros.
