Saturday: Rosberg saved what he could for Mercedes
Nico Rosberg hardly drove this morning during free practice 3 but still managed to place his Mercedes in 6th position on the grid, almost making up for Lewis Hamilton's underperformance, who couldn't do better than 12th place.
Nico Rosberg – 22nd and 6th:
Starting from 6th place is not where we want to be, however, considering that I didn’t drive in the last free practice session this morning due to a hydraulic issue, it’s not so bad. I had to use yesterday’s settings and I wasn’t comfortable in the car during qualifying, especially due to understeer. For tomorrow, I hope the settings will work better because I had a good long run on Friday. There are also chances of rain and we know that our car is very fast in wet conditions, so we can still hope for a good race.
Lewis Hamilton – 4th and 12th:
« I didn’t manage to do a good lap in Q2 today and it’s very disappointing, not just for me but also for the whole team, and I can only apologize because we had a fast car today. Qualifying has always been one of my strengths but I didn’t perform well this afternoon. Q1 went well but I didn’t do a good enough job in Q2. I went off at the Parabolica during my first run, which damaged the car, and it was a negative spiral from there. We’ll see what we can do from here for tomorrow. I will push like never before to achieve a good result, but there are a lot of fast cars ahead. »
