Mercedes confirmed Rosberg had signed a two-year contract extension on Friday morning, keeping him at the team until the end of the 2018 season.
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The 31-year-old Englishman, hit by a spate of reliability issues early in the year, has triumphed in four of the last five races including the British Grand Prix where Rosberg was demoted a place for a breach of radio rules.
If it is Hamilton, the world champion will have come back from a 43-point deficit to overtake his team-mate at the top for the first time this season, and Rosberg might have to console himself by counting the zeroes on his contract.
Despite an effort before the Hungarian Grand Prix to clarify the rules governing radio communication between Formula One teams and their drivers, their implementation has been derided as “bullshit ” by Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel.
Nico Rosberg was second fastest with a lap time of one minute and 21.584 seconds.
But after completing only four laps, and with just 15 minutes of the 90-minute session completed, Hamilton’s afternoon was over following damage sustained to the left-hand side of his vehicle.
The force of the impact, measured at 12G, triggered a safety alarm in Hamilton’s Mercedes cockpit and he was taken to the on-track medical centre as a precaution before swiftly being given the all-clear.
The pair clashed again earlier this month in Austria on a dramatic last lap as Rosberg lost his front wing and was given a 10-second penalty after being found guilty of causing the crash by race stewards.
There are limits on what information can be passed to drivers over the team radios during the course of a race, which angered Hamilton in Baku while Raikkonen also had issues at the European Grand Prix.
He added that he remained confident of bouncing back on Saturday to claim pole position on one of his favourite circuits, where on Sunday he hopes to grab a record fifth win.
Recent reports had suggested Rosberg would be leaving the Silver Arrows at the end of the current season after enduring a fractured relationship with team-mate Lewis Hamilton. “Now we’re trying this and I think it’s ok”.
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Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen also recently put pen to paper on long-term contracts with Red Bull. “Ferrari and Red Bull have been a bit up and down, but there is still such a long way to go”.
