Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMercedes

Rosberg keen to find more one-lap pace

Nico Rosberg says he needs to work on his qualifying pace after finishing second practice for the Spanish Grand Prix in third place.

Having topped the times in FP1, Rosberg was unable to repeat that performance on the medium compound tyre in the second session, finishing over 0.75s slower than team-mate Lewis Hamilton. With Sebastian Vettel second fastest in FP2 and also outqualifying his countryman in Bahrain, Rosberg says he needs to try and find more time over one lap.

“It’s always a compromise between long run and short run, set-up wise and everything," Rosberg said. "Especially in these conditions, it’s very hot out there so very tough on the tyres on a long run. But for sure I need to work on my one lap pace for tomorrow.

“Mainly it was that I worked the tyres too hard on the out lap, so starting the flying lap they were just too hot.”

However, Rosberg was happy with Mercedes' race pace despite a downshift issue in FP2.

“It’s just some small problems, we need to fine-tune some of those things. We were trying some new settings on the downshifts and that meant when I was pulling for the downshifts there was a delay, it didn’t go in straight away. That was just a bit awkward so we came back on those.

"All in all it was a good day, I have to say for the race especially. It was looking pretty good, especially compared to Ferrari which is important and compared to Lewis it was close. On one lap I still have some work to do.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.