Rosberg could have won eight in a row if Hamilton didn’t ‘shunt me off in Barcelona’

Mark Scott
Marshals recover Lewis Hamilton's crashed car after Nico Rosberg collision

尼科-罗斯伯格has joked that he could have won eight F1 races in a row if Lewis Hamilton hadn’t “shunted me off in Barcelona” – referring to the infamous 2016 Spanish Grand Prix.

Rosberg is part of a very exclusive Formula 1 club, one of only five drivers to win seven or more races in a row. Max Verstappen equalled Rosberg, Michael Schumacher, and Alberto Ascari as the winning streak that started in Miami extended to Hungary.

Verstappen is now just two more consecutive wins away from matching another dominant Red Bull icon in Sebastian Vettel, who won nine races in a row during the 2013 season.

尼科-罗斯伯格提出的关键Lewis Hamilton clash

The only distinction Rosberg has compared to the other drivers at the very top of the consecutive wins list is his run was constructed over the course of two seasons rather than one.

He won the last three races of the 2015 campaign and added the P1 trophies from the first four races of the 2016 campaign to his collection, taking his streak to seven.

He thinks it could have been eight had bitter rival and team-mate Hamilton not, in his words, “shunted” him at the Spanish Grand Prix – a race which Max Verstappen would go on to win on his Red Bull debut at the age of just 18.

“Yeah, that was quite cool,” Rosberg said on the Sky Sports F1 podcast when asked about his own winning run.

“I would have had eight if Lewis hadn’t have shunted me off in Barcelona, for those of you who remember that race in 2016.

“我笑的同学可以的t see me now, because that was a joke. That was that was a joke.”

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尼科-罗斯伯格the “best judge” of Max Verstappen performances

Rosberg went on to say that he feels he is one of the best F1 drivers to judge Max Verstappen’s current performance levels and highlighted the stark contrast between him and his Red Bull team-mate Sergio Perez.

He added: “It’s incredible, really, to see a such a performance for Max and I said it in the after race interview with him that I’m one of the people that can best judge his performance at the moment and the level that he’s driving at.

“And yes, it doesn’t exactly make for the most exciting races at the very front. But I mean, he is so deserving because it’s incredible the level that he’s at, so close to perfection all the time.

“You have got to compare to the team-mate. Look where Sergio Perez is.

“His best qualifying result in the last six Grand Prix was ninth on the grid, can you believe? And that’s with the same car and Sergio is a really good driver and knows how to drive a racing car. So Max [in comparison] is just extraordinary.”

Rosberg’s latest Sky F1 appearance came just a couple of days after a clip of him went viral when he took offence to being called ‘Britney’ by a Sky F1 junior presenter during the live broadcast of the Hungarian Grand Prix.

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