F1 world champion Nico Rosberg has claimed that Lewis Hamilton would occasionally think there was a 'conspiracy' against him at Mercedes after the team made a controversial decision ahead of their 2016 title battle.

Hamilton and Rosberg were team-mates and rivals at Mercedes between 2013 and 2016, with the latter retiring after his maiden world championship success in what proved to be his final season alongside the Brit.

Ahead of that season, Rosberg says that things had got so competitive within the Mercedes garage that Toto Wolff decided to switch up the teams of mechanics working on the two cars, putting many of Rosberg's trusted allies on Hamilton's car, and vice versa.

Toto Wolff's controversial 2016 Mercedes decision

The 2016 champion discussed Wolff's actions on the Beyond the Grid podcast, revealing just how tense things had got in the Mercedes garage.

“There were changes inside the garage over the winter. Do you remember the team swapped some mechanics between the cars? That was tough. At the beginning of 2016, things were deteriorating internally," Rosberg recalled.

“It was really starting to build a proper wall in between the two cars because the mechanics started to also compete, and the engineers started to compete, and when you start to see that, and maybe some pieces of information are not shared in the most open way anymore as they used to be, because the mechanics also want their car to win, and the engineers want their car to win. They're also super competitive. They want their driver to be champion, and Toto was aware of this.

Rosberg admitted it was not a 'healthy' position for the team to be in, and Wolff also knew this, deciding to take drastic action.

“Toto was aware of this, and so he did such an extreme chop, like came in so hard without any warning to anybody, and then switched our mechanics over," Rosberg added.

“My mechanics are my family, so I come into the garage, Melbourne, Friday free practice, and my family is on Lewis's car. So I'm thinking they must have put my car on the other side for some reason. I look at the car number; it's Lewis's car. So I'm like, 'What on earth is going on here?' And then I get informed. 'Yeah, there's been a change, and you weren't consulted.'

"And they're my enemies, Lewis' mechanics; I'm saying it more extremely, but they want Lewis to win, not me. So not my enemies, but they're my kind of rivals. Now my rivals are on my car, fixing the last bolt and putting me out on the racetrack. That was weird. Like, that was really weird."

Rosberg: Hamilton thought there was Mercedes 'conspiracy'

Rosberg says that he adapted to these changes rapidly, but that Hamilton struggled more with the change.

In fact, Rosberg claims that when things would go wrong for Hamilton that season, he would think that there was some sort of conspiracy going on on his side of the garage.

"Fortunately, though, for me, I really adapted really quickly. They became my new family or my second, my extended family. So that worked really well," Rosberg continued. Lewis struggled more.

"Every time something would not go his way, he would think straight away a little bit conspiracy or things like that. So he struggled a little bit more with that initially, and kind of shot himself a little bit in the foot with that in the first part of the season, because obviously everybody was always treated equally to the extent possible.

"So he was a bit shooting himself in the foot by engaging in that, and complaining and things like that."

In the end, Rosberg claimed the championship that year, beating Hamilton to the title by just five points. There was to be no repeat of the 2016 shenanigans, however, with the German driver calling quits on his F1 career after his success that year.

Valtteri Bottas was drafted in as his replacement at Mercedes and was never able to challenge Hamilton to the same extent, with the Brit winning four world championships on the spin between 2017 and 2020 to make him a seven-time world champion.