Nico Rosberg issues McLaren threat after team banned him from Belgian GP garage

29 July 2023 , 06:00

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Nico Rosberg has been 'cursing' F1 drivers with his actions in the pit lane (Image: Getty Images)

Nico Rosberg issued a hilarious 'threat' to McLaren after the Formula 1 team jokingly banned him from their garage at the Belgian Grand Prix.

The 'Rosberg curse' has become a talking point on social media in recent times. And it only became bigger after two separate incidents occurred last weekend in Hungary.

The premise of the curse is that the German might be giving bad luck to drivers whenever he takes a selfie in front of their garage. And that came to be the case in Budapest.

Ahead of qualifying he snapped himself in front of Max Verstappen's garage, and the Dutchman then failed to take pole. Before the race his photo was taken outside Lewis Hamilton's pit lane area, and the Brit dropped from first place to fourth and missed out on the podium.

As a joke, in Belgium this weekend, McLaren took a precaution against their drivers being affected by the phenomenon. A sign drawn up on A4 paper reading: "No Rosberg selfies," was taped to the front of their garage.

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Posting a photo of the sign on social media, the team wrote: "We've seen your jinxing powers, @NicoRosberg." But that message prompted a response from the 2016 world champion, who made a tongue-in-cheek threat in return.

He replied: "Haha... heading to your factory for a selfie." And, responding to that, McLaren simply shared an image of their rookie driver Oscar Piastri looking concerned.

Rosberg recently acknowledged that there is a trend of drivers suffering misfortune after his pre-session selfie habit. "Yeah, that’s not cool. That’s not cool at all," he said on Sky. "I post, like, on race weekends, I post a picture in the pit lane with a car or something, and that car has gone pretty poorly.

"So, I need to be careful with that in the future. The back of the back story here is that on Saturday I posted Max's car, and of course he lost the qualifying. And then on Sunday I was like, 'Go Mercedes', and I posted Lewis' car and that went completely wrong. So that's the backstory behind this."

Even without a Rosberg selfie, Lando Norris suffered bad luck in qualifying on Friday as he picked up floor damage in Q1. He still managed seventh on the grid but felt more was on the table had his car been in better shape. Meanwhile Piastri was sixth fastest and will start Sunday's race fifth after Verstappen's grid penalty is taken into account.

Daniel Moxon