Rosberg not counting Hamilton out in Baku

Nico Rosberg will start Sunday's Grand Prix of Europe from pole position after achieving what he described as a 'optimum' performance in qualifying, which saw his team mate Lewis Hamilton crash out in Q3.

But despite the fact that Hamilton will start the Grand Prix from tenth place as a result of his accident, Rosberg insisted he wasn't counting out the reigning world champion just yet.

"Lewis has shown very often that he can come back from 10th place and he did that in Russia," Rosberg pointed out.

"I’m excited for my team colleagues because they want to have a one-two and it’s still possible tomorrow but it’s going to be more difficult now for sure."

Rosberg hadn't been able to match Hamilton's pace during the practice sessions on Friday, but the balance of power between the team mates perceptibly swung when it came to Saturday and qualifying.

"It was one of the more challenging sessions out there, but everything worked out well. There was a bit of re-organising because for example in Q3 Lewis had an off in front of me so I had to abort that lap and then I just had one more attempt at the end, but that worked out fine.

"I’m very, very happy. It was great," he added. "All weekend we’ve been building towards it and in qualifying it was really optimum so it felt good.

"I’m sure the race is also going to be very exciting, it’s one of the easiest tracks to overtake so I think there’s going to be a lot of changing places I think, probably a lot of safety cars too and restarts, so it should be a good show.

“It’s a very exciting track, it’s a tough track. That’s why you’ve seen so many mistakes and I think that’s why tomorrow there’s going to be a lot going on."

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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.