Rosberg hopes for long stint at Williams

The German is committed to the Grove-based team for next season, despite having been linked with the vacant seat at McLaren, and could be one of the key figures in the driver market at the end of the 2008.

But despite welcoming the interest surrounding him, Rosberg has said that he could see himself sticking it out at Williams for many years yet - because he wants the challenge of helping them back to the winners' circle.

"I'm not going anywhere, at least for another season, and hopefully for longer than that," said Rosberg in an interview with The Mail on Sunday.

He added: "It's very nice to be linked to a move to McLaren and it would certainly be interesting to team up with Lewis again after we were teammates a few years back.

"But I'm very happy where I am. We made significant progress last year and I'm hoping we continue to improve even more next season.

"I want to play a major part in taking Williams back to the good times again, just as Alonso did with Renault and Michael Schumacher did at Ferrari before that.

"To turn a team around to that level is a greater achievement than just winning the world title with the best car."

Rosberg believes that Formula One could be about to witness a young-generation takeover - with himself, Lewis Hamilton and Robert Kubica poised to take the limelight.

"I'm really excited because I believe F1 will come to be dominated by my generation very soon," he said.

"I was the first of us to arrive in the sport, and Lewis is now ahead of the rest of us, but I believe there will be a great rivalry in the next few years involving Lewis, myself, Robert and Heikki, with maybe Sebastian Vettel, too, joining us because he did really well when he started racing midway through last season.

"The sport needs these sort of rivalries and I hope people will come to talk of us one day like they used to talk about the great rivalries involving Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet."