Tech

AN F1 WORLD CHAMPION JUST HANDED TESLA THE WHEEL

The Graze · October 30, 2026

Nico Rosberg spent a week in San Francisco on FSD (Supervised) in a Cybertruck. His verdict: "LIFE-CHANGING!"

Nico Rosberg spent his racing career refusing to let anyone else drive. Then he spent a week in San Francisco letting a Cybertruck do it.

The 2016 Formula 1 World Champion, who now runs the investment firm Rosberg Ventures, had a week of back-to-back founder meetings across the city. He rode between them on Tesla's Full Self-Driving (Supervised), and wrote on LinkedIn that it was "LIFE-CHANGING!" Sawyer Merritt posted the quote on X. Elon Musk reposted it.

What he actually said

On time: "My scarcest resource currently is time." By the evening, he wrote, "it actually felt like I'd won back half a working day!!"
On his marriage: "I even had a mini date with my wife on the drive."
On control: "My whole racing career, I was the one in control behind the wheel. But I'm now fully willing to hand over control!!"
On Europe: "In Europe, we're still way behind on this tech. And we for sure need to move faster!!"

The half-day is his impression, not a stopwatch. And this was the supervised version: a human still has to pay attention. Per EVwire, he gave Waymo credit for leading on fully driverless rides and said "better than humans" will never be good enough for him. The target is zero.

The number behind it

Rosberg pointed out that 75% of new Teslas delivered in North America last quarter came with FSD, up from 55% three months earlier. "People aren't buying a car and adding the software anymore," he wrote. "They're buying the software, and the car comes with it!" EVwire reports that Tesla's CFO, Vaibhav Taneja, confirmed the 75% figure on the Q3 2026 earnings call.

Two champions in a week

He isn't the only one. Days earlier, 1996 champion Damon Hill took a driverless Cybercab ride in Austin after the United States Grand Prix, Drive Tesla Canada reports. Rosberg's complaint about Europe has teeth: per EVwire, Latvia just became the tenth country to approve the system there, where Tesla now calls it Tesla Assisted Driving.

A man who won a world title by never giving up the wheel now takes meetings, and a date, behind a wheel he isn't turning. That's the pitch, from the last person you'd expect to make it.

Image: EVwire.