FAST FACTS ABOUT NICO ROSBERG
* Born: Wiesbaden, Germany on June 27, 1985 (31 years old)
* 206 Grands Prix
* 23 race wins, 57 podiums, 1 world championship
* Teams: Williams 2006-09, Mercedes 2010-16
* Rosberg is the son of Finland’s 1982 world champion Keke Rosberg, who won his title with Williams, and German mother Sina. He was born four days after Keke won the 1985 USA-East Grand Prix in Detroit.
* Rosberg grew up in Monaco and still lives there with his wife Vivian and daughter Alaia. He speaks five languages but not Finnish.
* He and Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton, a triple world champion, were teammates in go-karts in 2000. Rosberg tested for Williams in 2004, aged 17 and before he had his drivers licence. He declined a place to study aeronautical engineering at London University’s Imperial College.
* Rosberg made his Formula One race debut with Williams in Bahrain in 2006, alongside Australian teammate Mark Webber, scoring points with seventh place and setting the fastest lap. He ended 2006 in 17th place overall.
* In 2007 he was ninth overall. The following year he stood on the podium for the first time, a third place in Australia, but ended up 13th at the end of the season. In 2009, his last year with Williams, he finished seventh overall.
* Rosberg joined Mercedes – who had bought champions Brawn GP – for the 2010 season and partnered seven-times world champion Michael Schumacher. The younger German scored 142 points to Schumacher’s 72.
* Rosberg also outscored Schumacher in the following two seasons, taking his first pole and grand prix victory in China in 2012. In 2013, Lewis Hamilton replaced Schumacher and finished the season fourth overall to Rosberg’s sixth.
* In 2013, Rosberg won the Monaco Grand Prix exactly 20 years after his father had triumphed there. I
* Rosberg was championship runner-up to Hamilton in 2014 and 2015 but ended the year strongly with three straight wins.
* In 2016 he fought Hamilton in a title battle that went down to the final race of the season and won by just five points to become only the second son of a Formula One champion to win the title, after Damon Hill. Hill took his 1996 title 34 years after father Graham first became champion in 1962. Rosberg’s came 34 years after Keke’s success.
