Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMercedes

'I was always chasing my tail' - Rosberg

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Nico Rosberg attributes the gap to team-mate Lewis Hamilton during practice for the Hungarian Grand Prix to struggles with the balance of his Mercedes.

Hamilton topped both practice sessions on Friday, with Red Bull looking strong in FP2 as Rosberg finished the second session 0.7s adrift of his team-mate in fourth place. Explaining the gap, Rosberg says he is not happy with the handling of his car as it is inconsistent over one lap.

"Not ideal today, I just didn’t find the balance in the car," Rosberg said. "There was a lot of understeer and it went from oversteer to understeer and it was a bit difficult to explain. I was always chasing my tail, so I wasn’t very happy about that and we need to work on that for tomorrow.

"Tomorrow morning is free practice and I have enough time to get into it and sort it out, but race pace was very good today."

However, asked if he is confident he can turn the situation around on Saturday, Rosberg replied: "Yeah, I’m confident because I always have in the past even when there have been difficulties in a weekend, so it will be okay."

While expecting to be ahead of Red Bull in qualifying, Rosberg says he needs to get the most out of FP3 to challenge Hamilton for pole.

"The car is good and the car is good anyway, it’s just quick in every sense of the word and quick here too. It was just a bit of a difficult day for me and I need to improve on my qualifying pace – the race pace was very good. I still need to work and find the right balance because we have too much understeer, but tomorrow morning I’ll have plenty of time to work on that."

REPORT: Hamilton heads Red Bull pair in FP2 hit by another red flag

Click here for a gallery of Sergio Perez's crash in FP1 at the Hungarian Grand Prix

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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.