Rosberg 'feels great' despite narrowing title battle

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Just six weeks ago Nico Rosberg was enjoying a 43 point lead in the 2016 Formula One world championship coming out of the Russian Grand Prix. However this weekend, heading into the Grand Prix of Europe at the Baku City Circuit in Azerbaijan, Rosberg finds his margin over Mercedes team mate Lewis Hamilton dramatically trimmed back to just nine points.

Even so, Rosberg insists that he's not worried about the tightening situation in the championship battle, and says that he will continue approaching each race one week at a time just like he always has.

"As I’ve been saying, I haven’t been counting points. I wasn’t counting before and I haven’t been now. I wanted to win the last couple of races and it didn’t work and now I’m here and I want to win this race.

"That is the best approach for me to have, and to get the best out of my race weekend that’s the way to do it. That’s not been a blow to me because I haven’t been thinking that way.

"What’s been a blow has been my results, that’s been a blow because I don’t like finishing fifth in Montreal.

"It’s not going so well lately but that doesn’t change my optimism, my motivation or my feeling of coming here and being excited knowing there will be the opportunity to win, just as there has been on all the previous weekends, so it doesn’t change that much. Ask Lewis if it changes something for him."

Rosberg understandably bristled when asked by journalists if they were being unfair writing him off for the title - a sentiment that was clearly news to the driver.

"I didn’t know that, but thank you for letting me know. I haven’t read your pieces in case you have been writing me off. Thank you anyways.

"I’m feeling great. I’ve had a not very nice result lately, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m feeling good, excited and the car is awesome and I know I can win this race.

"It’s always going to be a battle with Lewis – that’s a given fact – and as I’ve always said it’s never going to be easy against him. I’ve lost out unfortunately in Montreal and that’s it. I’ll fight back."

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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.