Rosberg pleased with 'useful' practice starts

Rosberg claims that Friday’s limited free practice running at Sochi was still “useful”, with the Mercedes driver being able to carry out several practice starts ahead of Sunday’s Russian Grand Prix.

The German only completed six laps and set no time in a rain-hit FP2, while a bizarre diesel spillage disrupted the morning session. Having lost out to team-mate Lewis Hamilton at the start in Japan, Rosberg made the most of the tricky situation to improve in that area.

“Not a great day especially for the fans that came out to watch us,” he said. “They did not see too many cars going around. For us, I still went out there and did a few things with starts, procedures, pushed a little bit in the wet to have an idea.

“It’s always useful to do starts because we have no testing, so today was the opportunity to practice whatever I still feel like I need to practice. Also, it’s important for the team to do starts to get a good feel for the weekend.

“Rather than sitting in the garage, we might as well do some starts because even if you learn the smallest thing it’ll still be useful.”

With local weather forecast announcing that the remainder of the Sochi weekend will be dry, the entire field is left with only one free practice session to sample Pirelli’s soft and supersoft tyres in representative conditions.

Asked whether he felt nervous not to have been able to assess Mercedes’ performance on the same compound it had struggled with at Singapore, Rosberg replied:

“Nervous? No, because I’m very confident that we have a great car. But of course, this could be a more difficult weekend here for us. Today, it’s a pity really that it’s been raining because that means we’ll have to do all the work tomorrow morning.

“Hopefully we’re starting off in the right place, because you need to guess when you get to a new track, you need to guess how to set up the car. Hopefully we’re close to perfection already, but we’ll see.”

REPORT: Massa quickest in wet FP2 in Sochi

AS IT HAPPENED: Russian Grand Prix FP2