Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMercedes

Rosberg admits Hamilton only challenger

Nico Rosberg is expecting a battle only with team-mate Lewis Hamilton after Mercedes dominated the opening day of practice for the Australian Grand Prix.

The two Mercedes drivers topped the times in both sessions, with an advantage of over a second in FP1 becoming 0.7s in second practice. With such a big gap to the rest of the field, Rosberg admits he doesn’t see much of a challenge emerging from anyone other than his team-mate throughout the rest of the weekend.

“We always have an eye on the other teams, but definitely it has been a good day for us and a good start so we are very confident for tomorrow,” Rosberg said. “But of course with Lewis it is super close and it’s always going to be a battle. We just need to nail it to be in front tomorrow and after tomorrow.”

Despite setting the fastest time in both sessions, Rosberg says he is not yet happy with the handling of his car.

“For now I haven’t found the car balance 100%; the long run was okay but the short run had much too much oversteer for now – oversteer is when the back of the car steps out all the time and it’s very risky to drive.

“There’s a bit too much of that so I need to work on that this evening, but it’s such a mission because there are so many set-up options we can use to get the car right that it’s almost infinite. To know which one is the right one so that you are not just masking the issue with another parameter is really complicated.”

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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.