Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMercedes

Rosberg sees chance to cut Hamilton's lead

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Nico Rosberg says his main target on Sunday is to cut team-mate Lewis Hamilton's lead after securing pole position for the Russian Grand Prix.

While Hamilton holds a 48-point lead in the drivers' championship, Rosberg had the upper hand throughout qualifying and took pole position by 0.3s. Having been on pole but lost out to Hamilton at the start both in Suzuka and at last year's Russian Grand Prix, when asked if he has a plan for Turn 1, Rosberg replied: “No not yet, I haven’t thought about it yet.

"At the moment I’m just enjoying being on pole and I will dig in to that this evening or tomorrow morning to work out a plan for that.

"Of course the constructors’ championship is a really important target for us this weekend. It would be amazing to clinch it for the second time so early on in the season so we are out to do that. At the same time of course I’m out here to try to reduce the gap to Lewis in terms of points.”

And Rosberg praised his Mercedes team for helping him get a car he was happy with despite such limited running in practice after Friday's rain and Carlos Sainz's crash on Saturday.

“I’m very happy. It’s been a difficult weekend actually because of the little running that we got, we didn’t get much practice. It worked out really well, I’ve got a good balance on the car so thanks to my engineers as well.

"We had to guess a little bit where it was going to be and it all worked out well. I felt comfortable, got some really good laps in and am very happy with that.”

Rosberg beats Hamilton to Sochi pole

AS IT HAPPENED: Russian Grand Prix qualifying

Gallery: Carlos Sainz's crash in FP3

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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.