Nico Rosberg believes that Lewis Hamilton suffered from bad luck to a greater degree than George Russell during their first year as Mercedes team-mates in 2022. Hamilton ended up finishing 35 points adrift of his fellow Brit in the Drivers’ Championship standings and failed to register a single victory all season, while Russell managed to clinch top spot in Brazil for his maiden Grand Prix triumph.
Hamilton still enjoyed a slightly better qualifying and race head-to-head against his younger team-mate, but Russell ultimately secured more points and the only win of the season for Mercedes. Rosberg has since insisted that Hamilton was simply unlucky on too many occasions to beat Russell in the overall standings, although he reserved special praise for the latter as a result of his impressive debut campaign with the Silver Arrows.
“It’s his first year at Mercedes, an incredibly consistent year with such a difficult car,” said Rosberg in a YouTube video. “They got the car so wrong at the beginning of the season. They were trying to figure it out doing different set-ups and everything, he was just always there.
“He finished top five in almost every race this year, it’s incredible, so you’ve just got to give your respect to that. And with Lewis Hamilton as a team-mate, to beat him over the course of a whole year, I think George just did a really incredible season, always fast.
JUST IN: Ex-Ferrari star fires shots at Binotto and says he’ll ‘never forgive’
“Lewis always has these special days, very often, when he’s just untouchable. And even then, George was always right behind him at the very least, and if not in front of him.
“That’s not to say that Lewis didn’t do a good season as well. He was much more unlucky and had much more stuff going on, and a far more mixed start to the year.”
It remains to be seen whether Hamilton will be able to bounce back by claiming a higher points total than Russell at the next time of asking, with Mercedes desperately hoping to rejoin the likes of Red Bull and Ferrari at the very front of the pecking order this year. The 37-year-old has already insisted that the Silver Arrows are confident of their chances in 2023 after identifying the biggest problems with their previous car, which will go down as one of their worst in recent memory.
DON’T MISS
“For a long, long period of time, we couldn’t really, truly understand what the problem was or how to fix it, and it was difficult,” said Hamilton. “We kept trying and trying and trying and every time something new came, we still had the problems we had. So this is really, really huge.
“We know where our North Star is, we know where we need to put all our efforts in this winter. The progress we’ve made as a team has just been unbelievable.
“The boost it’s given all of us and the confidence it’s given everybody back at the factory, the factory is going to be pumping over the winter, and we’re going to be giving everything we’ve got to come out in that very first test with a car that can compete from race one.”
Follow our new Express Sport page on Instagram here.
