Rosberg was handed the chance to join the new Mercedes works F1 team for the 2010 season following its takeover of the championship-winning Brawn squad.

The German driver looked set to be partnered by Nick Heidfeld, only for Schumacher to announce his shock return to F1 with Mercedes after three years away.

“The name Schumacher was not even on the horizon, no-one was even talking about that,” 2016 world champion Rosberg said in an interview on F1’s YouTube channel. “And then suddenly Ross [Brawn] calls me and says: ‘By the way, your teammate is not going to be Jenson Button or Nick Heidfeld, it’s going to be Michael Schumacher’.

“I was like oh my God, [having the] craziest thoughts, that I would have no chance, that the whole team would go against me, that Michael would manipulate his w

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