Sky Sports F1 star takes Michael Schumacher swipe at colleague

Ralf Schumacher, Nico Rosberg, Hungary, 2024 — Photo: © IMAGO

F1 News & Gossip

Sky Sports F1 star takes Michael Schumacher swipe at colleague

Nico Rosberg is a Sky Sports pundit

Sam Cook Digital Journalist

Sports Journalist who has been covering motorsport since 2023

Friday 2 January 2026 21:12

Sky Sports pundit and former F1 racer Ralf Schumacher has taken a cheeky swipe at his colleague Nico Rosberg.

Schumacher and Rosberg work together as pundits during some race weekends across the season for Sky Germany, and Rosberg splits his time between the German channel, and the UK channel Sky Sports F1.

Rosberg raced in F1 between 2006-2016, and spent the majority of his F1 career at Mercedes, where he raced alongside two greats of the sport in Lewis Hamilton and Schumacher's seven-time world champion brother Michael Schumacher.

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Michael had come out of retirement to race for the works Mercedes team in 2010, but it didn't go to plan, with the German only adding one podium to his exceptional career tally across three seasons before retiring for good at the end of 2012.

Schumacher was beaten by Rosberg in all three of the seasons that they spent together at Mercedes, and Rosberg then went on to also beat Hamilton in 2016 to claim his maiden world championship title, before retiring immediately from the sport.

Still to this day, Rosberg speaks fondly of his time spent alongside Schumacher between 2010-2012, and tells stories about that period they were team-mates.

Now, however, Schumacher's brother Ralf has suggested that some of his broadcasting colleague's stories about his brother would be best left out of the public domain.

While praising Rosberg's career as a world champion, Ralf Schumacher suggested that the German should have been beating his brother more comfortably while they were team-mates, given the fact that the legend was into his 40s by that point.

"Everyone's different," Ralf Schumacher told Sport1.de. "The fact that Nico says this so openly today is to his credit. It's not my perspective, but then again, I didn't become world champion.

"He became world champion against a seven-time champion. That's quite an achievement. Nevertheless, you can see how he operates - even today. For him, it's always about mind games. He still tells stories about my brother - about alleged psychological games in restrooms or parking lots.

"I know Michael. He was already at a completely different point in his career back then. Ultimately, Nico simply should have pushed harder. If he's behind a driver over 40 in Monaco, that says it all."

What happened to Michael Schumacher?

Just over a year after his final retirement, Schumacher suffered a horrific skiing incident in the French resort of Meribel, leaving him with life-changing injuries, and he hasn't been seen in public since.

Schumacher was airlifted to Grenoble Hospital where he underwent two surgical interventions, before being put into a medically-induced coma.

A few months later, he was gradually withdrawn from the medically-induced coma, before moving back home in September 2014, nine months after the original accident.

His family, including brother Ralf, have managed to keep his condition under wraps for over 10 years, and kept him out of the public eye out of love for the German legend, who was said to do the same for his family when he was the most popular racer on the planet.

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F1 Ralf Schumacher Sky Sports F1 Nico Rosberg