Nico Rosberg says Mercedes is facing "an emergency situation" after being so far off the pace at the Singapore Grand Prix.
Having dominated qualifying throughout the last two years - only beaten once since the start of 2014 - Mercedes was never in the hunt for pole position in Singapore and ended over 1.5s slower than Sebastian Vettel. With Mercedes unsure of the reason for its lack of performance, Rosberg admits he still thought he would be fighting for pole based on the feeling within the car.
"Yeah, everybody is surprised," Rosberg said. "We don’t understand it for now. We tried a lot of things because we understood we had an emergency situation.
"This morning we tried a lot of things and didn’t manage to make progress, we were just lacking grip. If I wasn’t looking at the lap times, I would think we would be on pole but then I look at the lap times and I am not on pole."
And Rosberg says he was amazed by how much more performance Ferrari had in qualifying trim.
Asked if he'd ever experienced a similar drop-off, Rosberg replied: "Not this extreme, because we were so dominant and faster everywhere massively, then to go to the next race, we can’t lose 1.4secs on one lap.
"I just watched Sebastian’s on-board – I didn’t want to – but I shouted out in the engineering room ‘what the hell?!’ It seems like he is on a different planet in some corners."
REPORT: Vettel storms to Singapore pole as Mercedes dominance ends
AS IT HAPPENED: Singapore Grand Prix qualifying
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