Nico Rosberg won the 2016 Formula One championship after finishing second in the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. His Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton won the race. Sebastian Vettel of Ferrari was third.
Nico Rosberg said:
That’s really, really special. It’s a special feeling, a very unique feeling. I’m very thankful to all of them. And then of course the people closer to me. It’s my whole team, which is my racing family. I joined Mercedes in 2010 and it was a rough ride initially and now it’s come good in the last years and now it’s come good for me today – and that’s very, very special also. So, big thanks to my racing family, to Mercedes, to my family, to all of my team around me, working around me. Everybody has there part in this.
It’s such a long way to get to today, really. My go-karting engineer from when I was ten was writing me last night, memories from ten years old, fighting for the French championship, stories of motivation he was sending me yesterday, so it’s just all the way from there, every year it builds up to this success today. Even all those people through my career. I had a lot of important mentors in that sense. All the way through. If this is the moment to mention them, I will. It’s Serge Dino in go-karting, then in cars it was Team Rosberg and Peter Sieber and Erich Baumgärtner in Formula 3. Arno Zensen, Team Rosberg.
After that came GP2 where it’s Nicolas Todt, Fred Vasseur, big thanks to them for getting me into F1, and Steve Marcel who unfortunately passed away. After that F1, Williams, Frank Williams , Sam Michael, Patrick Head, to get me into F1. And after that, what come after that? The people that took me to Mercedes, that was Norbert Haug and Ross Brawn, Nick Fry, thanks to all of you to get me into Mercedes. That was the beginning of the story, and then of course Toto [Wolff], massive thanks to Toto and Paddy [Lowe] and Niki [Lauda] for continuing it on and taking me to where I am today.
