Rosberg delivers this brutally honest statement directly to Stella
F1 News
In the immediate aftermath of the Hungarian Grand Prix, Nico Rosberg delivered a brutal statement to try to teach McLaren team boss Andrea Stella a lesson. The 2016 F1 World Champion offered detailed advice after experiencing an intra-team battle himself with Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes.
McLaren first pitted the trailing car, Lando Norris, which allowed the Brit to perform an undercut on his teammate Oscar Piastri. As a result of that decision, McLaren asked Norris to give the place back to Piastri. Norris' race engineer, Will Joseph, told his driver to "re-establish the order at your convenience" over the team radio.
Why Nico Rosberg finds fault in that message
The radio messages to Norris got increasingly stronger and the Brit eventually obliged in the closing stages of the race. Stella visited Sky Sports for an interview after the race, but Rosberg first opted for a statement rather than asking the McLaren boss a question. This statement turned out to be a piece of advice.
"I strongly recommend that you guys, in managing this intra-team battle between the two drivers, need to be extremely clear and firm. Today, there was the phrase 'at your convenience, Lando'. That, for a driver, leaves the door very wide open to use all kinds of grey areas, so that would be my strong recommendation going forward. Very clear strong instructions from the pit wall to the drivers," Rosberg told Stella directly before warning him of the consequences.
"Otherwise, you end up with a whole bunch of difficulties between the drivers. And I talk from experience," Rosberg said. Stella vowed to use Rosberg's advice. "Nico, you talk from experience. I take your recommendation, and we will make good use of it," Stella replied.
Why McLaren made mistakes
Away from the interview, Rosberg acknowledged that these issues can happen for a team like McLaren, who have not really been in the situation before under the current management.
"McLaren is still in the learning curve here because they've not been in this situation before, being so dominant and having two drivers at the front there, it's a new situation. They need to learn things, and one of the things they need to learn clearly is how to manage the two drivers out there. They didn’t do a perfect job there because of all this negotiation," Rosberg concluded.