2016 Formula 1 champion Nico Rosberg revealed that he and his former team-mate Lewis Hamilton were forced to pick up the bill following a crash between them during the Spanish Grand Prix in the same year he won the championship title.
Rosberg and Hamilton were both fighting for the championship in the 2016 season and as a way of preventing the drivers from crashing into one another, Mercedes chief Toto Wolff wrote it into their contracts that they would foot the bill if their rivalry resulted in a crash.
The 2016 Spanish Grand Prix saw the team-mates crash on the first lap. Rosberg overtook Hamilton at the first corner, leading the seven-time champion to try to take the position back. The German-Finnish driver went to defend the move, which forced his team-mate onto the grass and into a spin.
Both cars became tangled and were forced to retire from the race.
"I had a contract that I had to sign which said that if ever we crash as team-mates, we split the bill 50-50, us drivers," Rosberg told Sky Sports F1 when asked about how his 2016 season compared to that of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri's 2025.
"We shared the Barcelona bill," he said, adding that his part of the bill came to "€360,000", meaning the full bill was a staggering €720,000.
He added: "That was painful."
McLaren's Norris and Piastri were both fighting for the championship this year. The Woking outfit allowed both drivers to race freely with the one provision that they could not crash into one another, which they managed to stick to with the exception of a couple of instances.
Norris went on to clinch the title, and a late surge from Red Bull's Max Verstappen resulted in a third-place finish for Piastri as the Dutchman rose to second in the standings.
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