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Rosberg: F1 team boss role and workload 'not for me'

Nico Rosberg says the sheer workload and the intensity associated with the job of managing an F1 team "are not for me", a feeling based on his observations of Toto Wolff's life at Mercedes.

Rosberg retired from F1 after winning the world title with Mercedes in 2016 and has since always declined to resume his career as a driver in another category.

But Rosberg's interest as an investor in green technologies and electric mobility led him to jump on the Extreme E bandwagon, the off-road electric and adventurous racing series that kicked off this year and in which he fields his own team, Rosberg X Racing.

The 35-year-old's is heavily involved in the management of RXR's outfit, but Rosberg insists that's as far as he'll ever go as a team boss, admitting to having no ambitions to ever run an F1 team.

"That doesn't appeal to me," Rosberg told German website Formel1.de. "It would be too much.

"It's a full-time job: morning, noon, evening, the whole day. When I see how intensely Toto works on the Formula 1 team, that's not for me, I want to avoid that in my life.

"I experienced that as a driver, that intensity and dependence, and I don't want that again."

But Rosberg nevertheless remains a keen observer of F1's affairs, and the German is happy to see how the world of Grand Prix racing is embracing sustainability.

"I think the journey Formula 1 is taking is great," he said. "We are living it in Extreme E: how to be a sustainable motorsport format, and Formula 1 is now also on its way.

"For example, by 2025 all their events will be categorised as sustainability events, which means they are very energy efficient, with very low CO2 emissions and so on. Then by 2030, the whole sport will be emission-free.

"That is an important direction. But the power solution will still be interesting, and we will probably have to go all the way to synthetic fuels.

"Although it's difficult to design that because it's very expensive, and very energy-intensive to produce, I think that would be a very valuable positioning for F1."

As for his aspirations as a driver, the 2016 F1 World Champion is adamant that he's permanently done with F1, and no amount of money would ever entice him out of retirement.

"Salary has never played a role for me," he said. "I still had two years left on my contract, and the salary on that contract also had a lot of zeroes on it.

"You can't motivate me with money. I have zero interest in that. I fulfilled my career the way I wanted to, with the world title, and I'm happy about my new life.

"So the thought never came up there, and it never will. That's over."

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Michael Delaney

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