In the Nico time

For Nico Rosberg, 2009 is potentially a make or break season. This is his fourth year with Williams and, although much will depend on how the team fare during what will be a difficult time for everyone in the sport, he needs to deliver before his reputation as one of the stars of the future slips away.

It's hard to ignore the fact that some major sponsors have left the Grove outfit, and still others are in well-publicised difficulties. While team sources insist that all is well financially, life won't be easy. On the positive side, the major package of rules changes represents an opportunity for an organisation with a history of innovation behind it to get its sums right. Patrick Head and Sam Michael have certainly embraced the challenge of KERS.

Last year Nico scored a couple of podiums, but very often the package was uncompetitive and he languished in the last third of the grid. Of course, the performance of the FW30 will determine how Rosberg will be perceived by the end of 2009.

Not so long ago he was being touted as a McLaren driver and, while his reputation is still strong, attention spans are short in this sport. Next time a top team is looking for a new driver there is no guarantee that Nico will be near the top of the list. In other words, he has to have a good season.

"I'll tell you next year if I'm happy with it or not!" he says. "I believe we've got a big chance because of the rule changes. I have faith in the team to make the best of it, so we'll see if it works out. With regards to KERS, it's going to be very challenging and difficult. I doubt how many teams are going to be able to race it in the beginning of the year. I think it's a good chance for us.

"And me personally, I'm gaining a lot of experience and the technical side is one of my strengths. I'm really trying to help out as much as I can. I'm really able to have influence, more and more they respect my opinion because they've seen there's substance behind it in the past.

Nico Rosberg confers with a Williams engineer © LAT

"When I say this technical direction needs to be taken, very often it is the way to go, so I've gained respect from the team and I'm able to push in more and more areas. As a driver you do get a big insight into everything, how the people interact within the team, who's strong, who's weaker, things like that. I'm really able to have a lot of influence and I really try to critique as much as I can."

During his first two years, as the new boy in the team, Nico worked alongside veterans Mark Webber and Alex Wurz. Last season, with Kazuki Nakajima in the other car, he grew into a senior driver role.

"It does make a difference of course. In 2007 at the end of the year, they really were asking both of us [Nico and Wurz], even though I must say they started to ask me more, because the performance was there. But throughout that year we had two people who were strong technically. In 2008, it fell onto me completely, at the beginning of the year especially, as Kazuki was new. So it was quite a different situation. But I quite like it, it's an interesting thing.

"Even at the beginning of the 2007 I pushed some set-up directions, which really gave us good performance, so they started to understand that this guy knows what he's talking about. So I think they used both of us very strongly and we were both pretty competent in terms of technical things."

Nico's skills were put to the test last year when the team clearly struggled to maintain form over the season. The car went well in testing, but a third place in Australia proved to be something of a false dawn.

"To put it in a nutshell it was because our development through the year was not as good as it should have been, really by far. And the other teams just shot away from us - notably Renault, but also Toyota and Red Bull. Toro Rosso eventually put us back a bit more as well. That was our fundamental problem of the season, we just lacked performance in the car.

"Very early on already we went the wrong way, and very quickly it seemed to open up. By the time we got to Barcelona it was already very evident that we had a problem. The weakness was mainly in the aerodynamics. It's got to be, because at the beginning of the season we weren't in too bad a situation and then we just dropped away.

"We were third in Australia, but it was difficult because it gave us some wrong hopes. That wasn't really the pace that we had. In qualifying in Australia we got beaten by Toyota, so already there we were the fifth team. We were there where we wanted to be, but only just. It was very easy to quickly drop behind three teams who were just there with us, and that's exactly what happened. So that really made it even more difficult, that we had such a positive boost initially, and then it just fell away."

Nico Rosberg at speed in Valencia © LAT

A look at Nico's qualifying performances presents a clear picture. Aside from Bahrain (and a wet Monza), the races where he qualified in the top 10 were all street and temporary circuits - Melbourne, Monaco, Montreal, Valencia and Singapore. Point and squirt places, in other words, without flowing fast corners.

"On street tracks we were good, first of all because we must have had a pretty good mechanical car. I don't know why that was, but maybe we were able to do a better job than other teams on street tracks. But fundamentally our aerodynamics worked relatively well in short corners and slow corners, but especially the short corners - that's the important part. I think that's the reason why we were relatively strong on street tracks and, as I say, mechanically it went over the bumps quite well."

The biggest frustration for Nico was that he was rarely able to take advantage of those opportunities. In the dry in Monaco he was superb, visibly impressive out on the track in practice and qualifying. Alas on a wet race day everything that could go wrong did, culminating in a huge crash at the Swimming Pool.

In Canada he did a brilliant job on the deteriorating surface in qualifying, but was then caught up in the Hamilton/Raikkonen pit exit collision.

"Monaco and Montreal was a difficult part of the season. We started to understand that at normal tracks it was going to be very difficult to have success and we had a good car on those two tracks, as we had on all street circuits.

"So the team had a lot of hopes on my shoulders to really get some big points, and me alone because Kazuki was too far back to really get some big points. Unfortunately, especially in Monaco, I didn't do a good job so the points got away. In Canada it was a more of a team effort that we didn't do a good job. I'm definitely going to include the team into the mistake."

So he wasn't warned that the red exit light was on?

"I'm not going to go into details, but I want to include the team, I'm not taking the blame on my shoulders alone, you know? So that was a bit of a difficult part of the season."

On the plus side, luck favoured Williams in Singapore. Not for the first time Nico was caught out by a closed pit lane just as he was due to refuel, but a clumsy delay from the FIA in issuing his penalty allowed him to build up enough of an advantage to claim a superb second place. Like winner Fernando Alonso, he took brilliant advantage of an opportunity when it fell into his lap.

Nico Rosberg celebrates his 2nd place in Singapore with Williams © LAT

"Singapore was a nice break for us because we'd been unlucky in many situations with the safety car. So it really was a nice break that for once I was on the right side of things - eventually. In the first place the same thing happened as always, it went completely wrong. It was an important break for the whole team, it gave us a motivating, happy moment and it was great for the sponsors because it was the race of the year more or less with Monaco.

"We showed the performance as well, we had relatively good pace, which was nice. I'd never done so many qualifying laps in one race! It was qualifying laps all the way to the beginning of the last stint. It was a very, very tough race and it worked out well so it was very rewarding."

But for much of the second part of the season he languished well outside the top 10 on race day. Was that depressing?

"Of course, yeah it's difficult because I want to have success in this sport, it's what I've been used to more or less in the past. I've always had success, which got me to F1. And it was going that way. In 2007 it was always going up, finishing fourth in the last race, third at the beginning of 2008, and then to drop away like that was not so easy.

"You come to a race track and you know that you've got no chance. It's not really nice, it takes away some of the fun to be honest. But anyway, I'm very determined in my job, so my motivation is still there and I still give everything I've got to the team."

From the outside it appears that his career has lost some momentum.

"It's not positive for my career to be 15th. It's just the way it is in F1, driver image is so related to the car performance, which is sometimes a difficult thing for us, just as you see with me now. So it's not been great for my career. But the good thing is really that still even in 2008 I was able to show what I had, my skill, and that I'm definitely a very strong driver. That's important, that you are still able to show that from time to time and remind people of that.

"It's not very exciting if you're sitting there in 15th position and you know you can't do any overtaking because you just lack the pace. But there were situations like Fuji and Shanghai, where I really gave it everything I had. There I also did qualifying laps the whole way through and I was really happy with my race from a performance point of view - lots of overtaking and good laps, very consistent. So I still get the thrill from getting the best out of what I have."

Nico Rosberg testing a provisional 2009 Williams © XPB

Does he feel that he's become a better driver over the past three seasons?

"In terms of pure speed, not so much. But there are a lot of things I've learned over the years which will help me on a qualifying lap, things that you pick up. So I would say I am a better driver, yes, and I always will continue getting better."

Like everyone else right now, Nico has no idea about how the team's form will shape up this year. He just hopes that Williams will get it right.

"It's impossible to say. We can just see our numbers and from that we can gauge whether it's positive or negative. What's important also is to think outside of the box and explore grey areas. There's got to be grey areas in the new regulations and that's where you're going to get the most performance from relative to other teams also. That's very important."