Former World Champion Nico Rosberg says he has no doubt that Kimi Raikkonen didn’t hit Lewis Hamilton on purpose at the start of the race at Silverstone.
Rosberg retired from F1 at the end of 2016, winning his sole World Championship driving for Mercedes as a teammate of Lewis Hamilton. With Ferrari consistently the closest challengers to Mercedes then, as now, Rosberg spent time having to worry about Kimi Raikkonen as a close competitor.
After the collision between Lewis Hamilton and the Ferrari at Silverstone, Lewis Hamilton made comments on the ‘interesting tactics’ used by Ferrari after being spun around at Turn 3. Team boss Toto Wolff said that Mercedes had to evaluate whether the incident was “deliberate or incompetent”.
Rosberg, speaking in his latest race vlog on Youtube, explained that he had no doubts about Raikkonen’s innocence in the wake of the comments made by Mercedes after the collision:
“100% not on purpose. We saw in Austria that Kimi is not driving for Sebastian – Kimi was P2 and Sebastian P3 and there was no letting Sebastian past. They didn’t even seem to consider it – Kimi is driving for his own thing. He completely messed it up, braked way too late, locked up and torpedoed into Lewis.”
Rosberg raced against Raikkonen from 2006 up until his retirement, and was no stranger to dueling with the Finn. He says that there were never any issues with the fairness of Raikkonen’s racing: “It was unusual for Kimi, that kind of thing usually doesn’t happen for him. Bit strange and definitely deserved his penalty and penalty points, but it was definitely not on purpose.”
