Vowles: Valuable Schumacher lesson led to Rosberg retirement

Nico Rosberg's decision to retire from Formula 1 in 2016 came after he learned a valuable lesson from seven-time World Champion Michael Schumacher, according to Williams team principal James Vowles, who worked with both drivers at Mercedes.

Vowles, said that Schumacher taught Rosberg to "squeeze everything out of himself" and to give his all in every race.

This mindset helped Rosberg to win his first and only Formula 1 World Championship in 2016, but it also took a toll on him mentally and physically.

“Nico learned a tremendous amount from him,” the former Mercedes strategist told Jake Humphrey on the latter’s High Performance podcast.

“It formed the Nico that then became a World Champion ultimately, which is squeeze everything out you can at the cost of everything else.”

• Read also: Vowles reveals how he managed driver conflict at Mercedes

Humphrey suggested that Rosberg had applied the lesson so well that, drained and mentally exhausted, he opted to retire from racing at the end of 2016 following his coronation.

“Exactly that,” replied Vowles. “The sacrifice that was painful to me where you let go of family and friends and loved ones, he did for that year.

“And he decided, and all the respect to him for it, but actually that’s not the life he wanted.”

But Vowles admitted that Schumacher’s influence and lessons also extended to himself at Mercedes.

“Michael, he taught me how to work really hard,” explained the Williams boss. “Michael wasn’t the most skilful in the car – I’ve said that was Lewis – but he knew how to extract every millisecond out of himself, and every millisecond out of the team.

“He was a leader. He would say, ‘I’m gonna go this way’, and the team would follow him there, so much so that both sides of the garage wanted him to do well.

“So much so that one of my regrets in my career is we didn’t get a win for him. That still hurts me ’til today, he deserved to win.

“The Michael you had facing in front of the media was a very different Michael to what was behind the scenes. And that’s how he did it fundamentally.

“So he would bring everyone on the journey and lead everyone on the journey, he would extract everything, he would squeeze himself for every millisecond he had, he would work as late as he needed to every hour he needed to. That was how he operated.”

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