Key Mercedes figure reveals fresh insight into Hamilton-Rosberg rivalry

Mercedes sporting director Ron Meadows has revealed insight into how Lewis Hamilton handled his rivalry with Nico Rosberg. 

Hamilton joined Rosberg at Mercedes in 2013, with the pair going onto fight for the world championship three times between ‘14 and Rosberg’s retirement as world champion at the end of ‘16. 

At the 2014 Belgian GP, Rosberg gave Hamilton a puncture on the second lap, ultimately putting him out, whilst at the 2016 Spanish GP, the two famously collided on the opening lap, with the stewards deeming this to be a racing incident. 

A further incident occurred at the 2016 Austrian GP after last lap contact left Rosberg with a broken front-wing, with Meadows defending both drivers in the stewards’ hearings. 

This is an awkward position for a sporting director, who is usually defending their driver against one from another team, but as Meadows explains, Hamilton respected this unusual position. 

“He’s definitely a unique character, he's someone who can sort of departmentalise his life,” Meadows told the New York Times. 

“I would say he's probably the most respectful driver I've ever worked with.

“I think 12 years we never had a cross word. We've been to the stewards quite a lot, especially in the Nico [Rosberg] vs Lewis days, and it doesn't matter who was to blame, he always he could see that I had to be impartial.

“We’ve never fell out once, and that's incredible considering the amount of races we did together. 

“He’s quite demanding on the engineers, because that's his job to extract the most out of them, but he’s always respectful, and when sometimes he’s been a bit too pushy, he’ll reflect and come back, and say: ‘yeah, maybe I just need to back off there’.”

Ron Meadows talks Lewis Hamilton

Meadows worked with Hamilton across all of his 246 appearances with Mercedes, going onto describe his working relationship with the driver who won 84 times and six titles with the Brackley team. 

Hamilton’s globe-trotting has been controversial in the past, including memorably after the 2018 Italian and Singapore Grands Prix where he visited the UK, the United States and China in-between the races, before going onto claim his greatest pole with the iconic Marina Bay lap.

It’s something Meadows noted.  

“I find him very easy to work with, I'm not sure everyone would say that, but certainly from my side, I've always found it very easy,” he says. 

“I think that was what makes him special, so that he when he's here, he's all over it, and when he comes to the factory, is all over it, but he knows when he can relax, and some drivers can't do that, so that’s probably the most unique part about him. 

“When he comes racing, he's fully focused on his racing, and then you'll see a social media post that he's 12 hours away on a plane somewhere doing something completely different, which is makes him unique to all the other drivers, because he's got so much going on in his life. 

“Charlotte [Davies, Mercedes PR] might say something different because she's probably trying to drag him away from his engineering duties to sit down with [the media], and he probably would prefer to sit down and look at data all evening. 

“But for me, he's always very obliging when I ask him to do things which are not session related, he’s always great. 

“He’s always very interested in the young driver part, which I am sort of involved with Gwen [Lagrue], he takes a keen interest in that.”