Rosberg unwilling to make same commitment to title fight

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Nico Rosberg says his decision to retire from F1 was made because he is unwilling to make the same commitment to defend his drivers' title.

The German won his first world championship with second place in Abu Dhabi, beating team-mate Lewis Hamilton after twice missing out in 2014 and 2015. Rosberg then stunned Mercedes by announcing his decision to retire with immediate effect, breaking the news at an FIA press conference in Vienna.

Explaining the reason behind his decision, Rosberg says the effort needed to fight for the championship was too much for him to consider repeating.

"At the same time thought it has been very, very tough," Rosberg said. "The last two years losing to Lewis were extremely difficult moments for me which fuelled my motivation in a way that I didn't even know was possible, to fight back.

"This year was extremely tough because I put everything into it. I didn’t leave a stone unturned from Austin last year really, where I suffered a lot after that loss. So I pushed like crazy along with everyone who was involved, which is also my family. A lot of sacrifices

"My wife, for example, at home. Every time I was at home she understood I needed to rest, so I never did any nights, I never had to take care of our little daughter. I never did any nights, never did any difficult things. She was always there to support and to make it as easy as possible, and that's just one example of the commitment we put into it.

"I've achieved this childhood dream now and I’m not willing to do that sort of commitment again for another year. I'm not interested in coming fourth or whatever. I'm a fighter and I want to win. I'm not interested to do that again, I don't want to do it again so I decided to follow my heart which told me to stop there, call it a day and go on to other things.

"It's been wonderful and it just feels right to me. I'm very excited, my wife Vivian is also very excited, she'll have her husband back and I'll be a dad again then in the next time, which is going to be wonderful."

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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.