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Rosberg: 'Verstappen won't be happy with F1 for adding sprint races'
- Corwin Kunst
Nico Rosberg thinks it will be very difficult for Max Verstappen to continue his World Championship title reign. The 2016 world champion believes that McLaren has a much faster car. He also highlights how Lando Norris has an extra chance to close the gap with three sprint race weekends remaining on the 2024 calendar.
Verstappen and sprint racing
Verstappen has repeatedly stated that he is not a fan of sprint races. According to the World Championship leader, it takes away a bit of the excitement for Sunday, which is why he is more in favour of the traditional format. On top of that, in the current situation, Norris has three extra chances to make up points or even pass Verstappen in the Championship standings.
Rosberg suspects Max will not be too happy about it."Max will not be happy with F1 for bringing in all these sprint races because those three times eight points...that's a lot of points. Like that is massive," the former Mercedes driver said in Sky Sports' podcast. "With the way his car is going, that adds a lot of pressure to Max. I really think this could go down to the wire, which is just incredibly exciting."
He continued: "Lando can seriously win, and he's going to get Oscar's [Piastri] help as well at some point. So then he can really win all the races remaining. And for Max to finish second every race remaining is so difficult. It's almost impossible because you have Oscar, you have the Ferraris, you have the Mercedes, who occasionally is brilliant. It's almost impossible for him to finish second all the time. This is going to be super exciting."
Mistakes by Norris
However, this needs Norris to be almost faultless in the remaining six races. In Singapore, he nearly threw away a good result. "[The mistakes] baffled me a little bit, what was going on there. He hit the wall twice. Both were like really severe, almost race endings moments where he was quite lucky not to DNF."
Rosberg saw Norris brush his front wing across the barrier and then almost repeat George Russell's 2023 crash at Singapore. He also saw the Brit struggling with a backmarker. "I can't remember myself or Max Verstappen, or Lewis [Hamilton], when leading so comfortably with like 30 seconds, making three major mistakes like that. That was a bit strange," Rosberg said.
This article has been created in collaboration with Matt Gretton