To answer this important historical question we must go back to the beginning.
1998
In 1998 Jenson competed in Formula Ford as well and won Autosport’s young driver award. The 18 year old rising star also attended the Spanish GP where he met Keke Rosberg and by extension, his then 13 year old son Nico who was also there (although Jenson wished he wasn’t lol).
“I was introduced to a dozen or so big names in the sport, including Patrick Head, Frank Williams and even Keke Rosberg, who used to be my dad’s favourite driver back in the day. Keke had his son Nico with him, who’s five years younger than me but was acting even younger that day. He was pulling at his dad’s arm as we were talking, trying to pull him away. I remember looking down at him, silently cursing him for messing up my introduction to Keke, thinking, ‘God, just leave us alone.’” [Jenson Button, Life To The Limit, 2017. Pg. 103
2000
While Nico & Lewis were galavanting around Italy eating Kellogg’s frosties, throwing mattresses out the window, and destroying hotel rooms by wrestling, Jenson was debuting in Formula 1 and telling us how much he looooooved Britney Spears. Shout pout to Formulinos who has a great timeline on these two that i found when i was searching for Jenson’s early quotes about Britney (Spears). I remembered there being quotes out there about this but I did not remember who insane they were & they shared two great ones.
2006
Nico Rosberg Joined F1 & lives were CHANGED.
The first ever instance of the Nico’s iconic nickname is in Brazil 2006. At what was then the last race of the season, Nico and teammate Mark Webber collided. He shares the story in his book Aussie Grit (could not recommend less):
“The final race of that 2006 season summed it all up. It was in Brazil, as usual in those days, and it was an unmitigated disaster. Both Williams cars were out on the opening lap – because we had tangled with each other. Nico rammed into the back of me; I lost my rear wing, he lost his front. I limped round to the pits to retire; Nico carried on but crashed heavily in the second- last corner and brought out the safety car. My exasperation with Williams came out when someone asked on the radio if Rosberg was on his way back too, and I couldn’t resist a misplaced crack at the blond, self-consciously good-looking guy in the other Williams cockpit. ‘No, mate,’ I answered, ‘Britney’s in the wall…’” [Mark Webber: Aussie Grit. Pg. 199]
But, at least on the F1TV archive race footage, Marks radio was not broadcast at the time so we don’t know if this was public information at the time but the Nickname was there from his first season.
2009
This is more of a fun side note but what a squad.
“At Brawn, it was myself and my teammate, Rubens Barrichello, who both had the same type of motorhome, the aforementioned Newell. Sebastian had one. Fernando had one. Nico Rosberg had one. Lewis has (or had) a truck, which was bigger inside, but not as luxurious, ver contemporary. I didn’t like it- it didn’t feel like home. Cool, but not to my taste. So there were probably six or seven of us who had motorhomes, and so we all clubbed together to pay for a ‘motorhome guy’ who would make sure our motorhomes were clean and that they were stocked with Babybels and that the bed was set up at night so you didn’t have to do it yourself.” [Jenson Button: How To Be an F1 Driver, 2019. Pg. 81-82]
2010
This year Nico moved to Mercedes, Jenson was at McLaren with Lewis.
June 27th
Before the European GP Jenson and Lewis sing Happy Birthday to “Britney” during the drivers parade in what is one of my favorite videos ever [via Out of Context F1 on YouTube]
July
In a since deleted article (you can read here on wayback machine) Planet F1 reports that in a superlative poll done of the drivers at least one of them voted for Nico to be the “Most Beautiful Woman In F1.” Which is mean but also I think probably tells us more about the inner world of that driver than about Nico Rosberg.
August
Jenson gives us a soundbite that i truly wish i could find without the french voiceover but you can hear him pretty clearly say “Nico Rosberg, we call him Britney” then some mumbling and a cutaway that had no night being that funny and then “because he’s so beautiful.”
Thank you from the bottom of my heart to andhetookoff on YouTube for providing the only recording i have been able to scrounge up of this monumental event. I was also able to find discussion of this on the Autosport forums where we get the context that this was Jenson’s reaction to winning the most beautiful driver award from female journalists.
November
After what we can assumed based on the dates was the 2010 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Nico tweeted out that someone had taped a photo of Britney Spears over his passport photo. He also provided a photo which is why he is a real one. Both this tweet (minus the photo bc this was when you still had to use those weird 3rd party sites to post pictures on twitter) and Jenson’s reply are still up to this day.
2011
Jenson was fully jsut calling Nico Britney at this point lol.
Nico also commented on the nickname and I honestly have no words, even I cannnot defend rosbeef.
How about his relationship with Jenson Button then, who calls him ‘Britney’? “I know it’s only joking around. Doesn’t mean I like it! But he should be aware that my friends call me ‘Rosbeef’.” (Auto 123: F1: Rosberg jealous of ‘no one’ by Antione Cremer, 11/20/11)
2016
Nico is not pleased at Marks sassy radio and it seems like this is the first time he’s hearing about it. [Formula 1 via YouTube]
2021
Nico does a podcast episode with Jenson and it’s amazing on a number of levels but most importantly Nico definitively states that it was Jenson that gave him the Britney nickname. Jenson also feels the need to remind us that is his also his wifes name as if that is something I have stopped thinking about since it happened.