'We have work to do to stay in front', warns Rosberg

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Despite ending up fastest in Friday's practice sessions at the Marina Bay Street Circuit, Mercedes' Nico Rosberg said that he remained wary about the threat posed by the team's main rivals this weekend.

Mercedes suffered a rare stumble in Singapore last year, when the race was won by Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel, and Rosberg didn't know whether they had managed to get on top of the issues in 2016.

"We know that this is the best track for Red Bull and Ferrari so we have to be careful and do the best we can," cautioned Rosberg. "We shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves because last year on Friday we looked okay and on Saturday we were nowhere.

"We can see what they were doing and for sure they were quick today, both Red Bull and Ferrari, also in the long runs. We sure have work to do

"We think more or less we understand the situation, but we thought that as well last year and in the end we have to concentrate on ourselves and maximise what we’ve got.

"Let’s wait and see," he said. "We definitely need to keep on working and getting the most out of it for tomorrow and hope that’s going to be enough to give Red Bull and Ferrari a run for their money.

"It will definitely be important [to get pole] even though we’ve seen in recent races that it’s not the most crucial thing, but definitely that’s what I’ll try and aim for."

Rosberg added that his unfortunate accident in FP1 when he went into the barrier late in the session was nothing to worry about, and not due to an underlying technical issue.

"Just braked too deep and locked up and that’s it. In general the day has been okay, it’s been a decent start to the weekend."

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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.