Villeneuve predicts tough year for Rosberg

Rosberg will race for Williams next season after signing a long-term contract. The 20-year-old son of 1982 World Champion Keke will partner Australian Mark Webber at the Cosworth-powered team.

Williams have not won a race since the end of 2004 and will be left without the backing of a car manufacturer next season.

And Villeneuve believes Rosberg may pay the price for racing at Williams when the team are struggling.

"I think it'll be tough for Nico," Villeneuve said in an interview with Autosprint. "In the sense that Williams were a team in free fall in 2005. To arrive as a rookie, with no F1 experience, in a team in a bad situation is a difficult thing to handle.

"I think Williams are convinced to be in a much better situation than they actually are in reality, [so] in cases like this, it's often the driver the one falling on his face."

Villeneuve, whose future in Formula One is unclear despite having signed a two-year deal with Sauber before BMW took over the team, also reiterated his criticism of teams signing young "robot drivers".

"[Teams] want young boys because they look for robot drivers," he added. "They want people who get in the car, keep quiet and follow what the engineers and the computers say.

"But I belong to another generation. To go really fast, you need the car to become part of you. You need to feel it. I know these things because when I arrived there wasn't much electronics around. But today it's not like that."