Nico Rosberg relishes the newfound challenge facing Mercedes with the rise to power of Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel, urging the team to "bring it on" after Vettel's win in Malaysia.
When the lights went green Rosberg set off for a gritty run down to the first corner and almost succeeded in edging out Vettel with both cars separated by mere centimetres as they entered Turn 1. Having finished third behind Vettel and Lewis Hamilton, Rosberg said he was happy with the fight.
"I closed my eyes and went for it, just like last year," said Rosberg. "Sebastian left just enough space so it was okay. It was a good battle into Turn 1 as he squeezed me on to the inside and I had to avoid him or we would have touched."
When the first rounds of stops were ordered as a result of a safety car deployment, the German lost time queuing in the pits behind team mate Hamilton and therefore needed longer to clear traffic as a result.
"I knew that was coming but I think we underestimated afterwards not being able to pull out of the pit lane because of other people coming. They planned on releasing me alongside the others but perhaps the team judged it was too risky. That definitely cost me a huge amount of time."
While Rosberg initially fought back to reduce the gap with Hamilton in the latter part of the race, thanks partly to using the softer compound tyres, his chase for second place progressively faded.
In Australia, Rosberg expressed his hope that Ferrari could get closer to Mercedes although he perhaps wasn't expecting to see the Scuderia's performance level increase so dramatically in such a short time.
"There's a big difference between getting close to us and beating us because they're faster," Rosberg said. "We're going to fight back big time and on behalf of our team, as I said on the podium, bring it on. We're going to fight back big time."
Click here for Sunday's gallery from the Malaysian Grand Prix
