How Rosberg “messed with Lewis’s head” in 2016 title duel

Words Stuart Codling; Portraits Malcolm Griffiths

With more than a hint of reverence, Nico Rosberg reaches out to touch his championship-winning W07 Hybrid affectionately on the nose, then turns to regard the grand sweep that is the cavernous concrete inner sanctum of the Mercedes-Benz Museum.

Here, like pinned butterflies in a natural-history exhibit, but on a grander scale, the racing cars attached to the banked wall bear silent testament to an evolutionary line - in this case, one that stretches from chain-driven pre-war leviathans such as the 1909 Blitzen Benz to the latest hybrid Formula 1 machinery.