Rosberg recounts 'crazy' Hamilton rivalry

Nico Rosberg has offered a glimpse into how fraught his title battles with Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton really were. As the Silver Arrows streaked clear in the turbo hybrid era's early years, Rosberg and Hamilton were pitched in direct competition for almost every race victory.

Hamilton got the better of Rosberg in 2014 and 2015, but Rosberg won the 2016 championship before retiring from Formula 1 almost immediately.

Once childhood friends, Rosberg and Hamilton's relationship disintegrated as they became fierce rivals, with several on-track tangles only serving to ramp up the tension.

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Rosberg is now happy to rekindle friendship with his former rival, but says any reconciliation will come from a place of mistrust and pure rivalry.

Rosberg told The Sun: "I am not a competitor anymore, so for me I am open to being neutral and having a laugh again, why not?

"I have a lot of respect for Lewis and what he has done. Of course, we had some crazy and intense moments and run ins but that's unavoidable I guess if you are fighting for the world championship.

"We were so ultra-competitive. I kept on saying that I was taking it one race at a time, but that was my defence.

"Of course I never admitted that at the time. I did not talk about it. I worked closely on it with a mental trainer.

"During that battle, the media had such power that maybe they did not even realise.

"They influenced my engineering team because all they do is read about F1 and the headline 'Rosberg disses his team', or whatever even it was not 100 percent like that, if I am sitting next to them while they are reading it during a race weekend, it has influence, so the drivers have to take the media game importantly.

"The battle with Lewis was intense battle and at times it was over the edge, but you cannot expect anything else when it was just the two of us in the same team fighting for the world championship."