Nico Rosberg shares Ferrari whisper he’s heard after ‘clumsy’ Canadian GP

Nico Rosberg has shared a rumour he has heard about Ferrari following their “clumsy” weekend at the F1 Canadian Grand Prix.

Ferrari are considering whether to set up a base in the UK to move away from operating their F1 team solely out of their Maranello headquarters in Italy, according to the 2016 world champion.

Six of F1’s 10 teams are based in the UK, while Alpine have a factory in Enstone alongside their primary base in France and Swiss-based Sauber squad have announced plans to establish an engineering hub in the UK.

“So I’ve seen a little bit of inner workings there at Ferrari, and you can see that the level of excellence that they’re at is not comparable to the British teams, and especially to someone like Mercedes, in many areas, whether it goes from marketing, to other areas,” Rosberg revealed on the Sky F1 Show.

“So you can just see there, the whole culture, the fact that they’re in Italy, it makes it a lot more difficult to them.

“For example, at Mercedes, whenever Lewis had a thing, he would just go to Toto, and Toto would be able to make the decision, call the shot immediately, done.

“Whereas at Ferrari, there’s so many different decision-makers, and even Lewis doesn’t really know, ‘Okay, if I ask him, and he says yes and he does it, and the other guy still complains afterwards.’ It’s all a bit difficult there.

“There’s a couple of ideas that I heard going round. I think Ferrari has been exploring to perhaps open a kind of subsidiary in the UK, because that’s where the F1 ecosystem is.

"So I’ve heard rumours that they’re also thinking about opening a subsidiary there.”

However, Rosberg went on to acknowledge: “The problem then is just getting the communication right.

“If you do have a Ferrari entity in the UK, that’s one thing, but it still needs to communicate awesomely with the headquarters, and then maybe that’s not possible to get the communication that good, that that actually makes sense.”

Ferrari’s ‘clumsy’ Canadian GP weekend assessed

It was another disappointing weekend for Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton who finished fifth and sixth at the Canadian Grand Prix as Ferrari slipped back to third in the constructors’ championship behind Mercedes.

Rosberg believes Ferrari’s “clumsy” weekend in Montreal summed up their season so far.

"We've got to remember that Charles Leclerc was quick at times in the race,” Rosberg said.

"He was very quick; he was keeping up with the McLarens very nicely. He was quick in qualifying. Some say he could have been top three in qualifying, right up there with the others.

"I think they also did a wrong tyre choice in qualifying [by not running the medium tyre in Q3].

"So a lot of strategy mistakes there because then also in the race they stopped Lewis into a bunch of traffic which lost him loads of race time.

"They also had a free opportunity to try and a one-stop with Charles. It was a free opportunity but they didn't try to do it.

"Behind there was just Lewis and loads of space, there was just nobody there, and they could have taken a shot at it and left him out on that first stint in the first place because he was going strong and they just pulled him in early. He was also a bit annoyed about it because he wanted to stay out longer.

"So it was a bit of a clumsy weekend from Ferrari.

"Then also bad luck with the groundhog. So it all came together, which is not good.

"It's like the story of their year so far, isn't it? It just keeps on going like that, it's a tough one for them."