Nico Rosberg has detailed how his former Mercedes team-mate Michael Schumacher taught the German how to get under the skin of Lewis Hamilton after the pair shared a fractious relationship alongside each other.
Rosberg is the only driver to have beaten Hamilton during the turbo-hybrid era which was introduced in 2014, with Mercedes dominating the championship ever since.
The German pushed the seven-time world champion to the limit at the team, with some very public inter-team spats broadcast across the world, before Rosberg finally sealed the deal in 2016 before promptly retiring from the sport with no love lost between the pair.
Yet, Rosberg has revealed on Saturday during the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix race weekend that he picked up quite a few of his mind game skills from his former team-mate Schumacher, whom he raced alongside between 2010 and 2012.
“Michael was the absolute master of all time when it came to mind games,” Rosberg told Sky Sports F1. “I was his team-mate for three years. I had him on the opposite table engineering all day long during race weekends. That guy man, I mean, he would wake up in the morning and he’s a mental warrior.
JUST IN:
Lando Norris wary of causing ‘controversy’ for Verstappen and Hamilton
And despite it not being an inter-team battle, Rosberg believed the mind games will be on.
“Of course it’s possible between rivals,” added the 2016 world champion. “The media, for example, is so powerful.
“And then also all the time what you’re doing on the track, body language and you always come across each other very often, they’re sitting in press conferences together, what an opportunity, vice versa, against each other mentally as well.