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Rosberg meets President Trump's biggest fan!

2016 Formula 1 champion Nico Rosberg has been catching up with an old friend this week, and in the process he found out that Bernie Ecclestone is a big supporter of a certain highly controversial American politician.

"Trump is the best thing that's happen to the world in the last few years," Ecclestone told an astonished Rosberg.

Perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised, as the way Ecclestone put it, it seems that he sees a lot of his own style in the way that Trump has gone about things since being elected president.

"He's woken everyone up," Ecclestone insisted. "I don't think he's done anything wrong.

"He's sorted out people coming into his country that shouldn't be there. And saying that this shouldn't happen to other countries.

"He's got the dollar very strong, so he's in a position to dictate a lot of policies."

However, Ecclestone admitted that his view of President Trump had changed since he first encountered the man in person.

"When I met him, I wasn't impressed," he said. "He hadn't done anything particularly those days.

"He wanted to be famous. He was well known, but there's a big difference being well known and famous. He always wanted to be famous and I suppose you couldn't do much more than what he's done to be famous.

"He's used that and doesn't care what he says or does, and just gets on with it."

Rosberg interviewed the former F1 chairman for his new Beyond Victory podcast, available via iTunes.

The former Mercedes driver revealed what Ecclestone had said to him immediately after he had announced he was retiring from the sport, just days after winning the title.

"The moment I retired, I saw you five minutes afterwards after I announced it and you whispered in my ear: 'You've made the right decision'. I've never asked you why you said that."

"Because you made a decision - you didn't muck around," Ecclestone explained. "You don't know what's going to happen with the rest of your life. Which might not have happened if you'd continued racing."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.