Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton will never be friends. A decade after their toxic 2016 title fight ended with Rosberg's championship and shock retirement five days later, the German told F1 Beyond The Grid the relationship is "neutral" now but "we will just not be best friends ever." No surprise when four years as Mercedes teammates produced collisions at Austria and Spain, plus Hamilton defying team orders in Abu Dhabi to bunch up the pack and nearly cost Rosberg the title. He apologized to fans for walking away but stands by it—peak performance, dream achieved, impossible to sustain that intensity another year. Rosberg says the retirement call was "scary" and angered Niki Lauda, who suddenly needed a replacement (enter Valtteri Bottas). The thaw between them falls short of the Senna-Prost reconciliation. Some rivalries burn too hot to ever cool, and theirs went nuclear when it mattered most.
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