Family guy: Why Rosberg’s retirement is a fitting end, relatively speaking

There was a moment after Nico Rosberg’s championship winning drive on Sunday that made me scratch my head.

He was being asked all the questions you’d expect to be asked, and then one reporter wondered out loud if Rosberg would have No.1 or No.6 on his car next season.

Instead of looking excited at the prospect of that choice, Rosberg looked uneasy, and said: ‘Ah, let’s wait and see.’

Well, now we know why he appeared a little pensive.

His decision to quit F1 now is one of the ballsiest career decisions I can recall in the sport.

It’s one thing to retire as champion when you’re a veteran with little left to prove, such as Alain Prost or Jackie Stewart.

But to do it after your maiden championship, in a season when even your team boss has intimated that you were fortunate, is a ballsy call.

Whether you respect Rosberg or not for his decision – and most fans do appear to be applauding him – it does give us an insight into some of the relentless pressure that the top drivers are under.

Rosberg, though, faced a unique set of challenges, because he is the son of another World Champion, the Flying Fin Keke Rosberg (pictured above with Nico, after the youngster’s drive with Williams was announced).

Throughout his tenure in F1, but especially at Mercedes, his family has been a stick with which to beat Rosberg.

Not winning? That’s because he only got into F1 because he’s a daddy’s boy.

Winning (pictured, celebrating his World Championship in Abu Dhabi)? Well, what do you expect, he’s had a privileged route in the sport.

The truth is, if you’ve been groomed to be a champion driver from a young age, you haven’t really had much of a say in your career path.

Rosberg speaks English, French, Italian, German and Spanish fluently – but not Finnish, his father’s native tongue.

Rosberg Snr, it is said, didn’t teach him Finnish, wanting him to instead concentrate on other languages which would be of more use to his son’s motorsport career.

Nico started karting at the age of six and, from that point on, his life revolved around motorsport. He was no slouch and progressed into Germany’s Formula BMW in 2002, where he took the title.

That helped him move up the career ladder into… his father’s Formula 3 Euro team. You can see why some onlookers may have thought he had it easy.

Easy or not, he moved into GP2 – rather than studying aeronautical engineering, smart lad – and promptly won the series’ inaugural season.

The rest is F1 history – a move to Williams, where he recorded the fastest lap in his first race, and showed his racecraft; the move to Mercedes, alongside Michael Schumacher; the in-team rivalry with former karting buddy Lewis Hamilton; the championship that so many said he didn’t deserve.

He’d gone from being told he had lucked into F1 to being told he’d lucked into a championship.

The truth is, no one lucks into an F1 championship. You don’t get a top drive just because your dad was a winner, or because you bring sponsorship money, though such things can help you get into lesser teams.

F1 is way too brutal for that. Ask Daniil Kvyat, unceremoniously dumped into Toro Rosso by Red Bull bosses who wanted the raw teenage talent of Max Verstappen bringing home the points.

Yes, if circumstances had been different for Hamilton this season, the championship would have turned out differently; such is life.

Rosberg took the pressure being applied by his employers, by fans, by the media, by his loved ones and, not least, by his team mate, and came home a champion.

He described the season as ‘so damn tough’ and paid a huge tribute to his family: ‘I cannot find enough words to thank my wife Vivian (pictured); she has been incredible.

‘She understood that this year was the big one, our opportunity to do it, and created the space for me to get full recovery between every race, looking after our daughter each night, taking over when things got tough and putting our championship first.’

And so Rosberg’s F1 story came full circle – a man who got into F1 because of his father, now leaving F1 because, in part at least, he is a father.