Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMercedes

Mercedes could be behind Ferrari - Rosberg

Nico Rosberg insists Mercedes could be behind Ferrari despite its impressive pace in pre-season testing.

Mercedes completed the most mileage throughout the eight days of testing by some distance but was only fastest on one day while Ferrari set the pace on five occasions. However, Rosberg's pace-setting time came on the soft tyre and was just 0.3s slower than the best Ferrari lap which was set on ultrasofts.

Despite not showing Mercedes' comparable pace on the faster tyre, Rosberg says the informations Mercedes has suggests it could actually be slower than Ferrari come Melbourne.

“No they’ve been very quick, for sure," Rosberg said. "And all the teams have their strategists so we know what fuel all the others are running and they know our fuel so we know more or less where we are compared to Ferrari. That's why I say it’s close, but we‘re not sure if we are ahead or behind.”

And Rosberg says he is not concerned Mercedes has no data on the supersoft and ultrasoft tyres, with the new compound not set to debut until Monaco.

“Well there is a potential small downside but at the same time is it really representative? Because here you have 20 degrees which is completely unrepresentative, the track is not a track where you are going to be running those soft tyres because this track is not made for that so it’s limited.

"I'm sure they really thought about the tyre choice they made for testing and this was the way to go.”

FEATURE: Hello to Halo?

ANALYSIS: The two F1 pre-season tests in numbers

GALLERY: Pre-season testing

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

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.