Nico Rosberg bounced back from a difficult morning session to secure fifth on the grid in Canada.
The German stopped on his first lap out of the pits in FP3 after a fuel system problem, and thus didn’t do any mileage at all in the crucial final session while his rivals were readying their cars for qualifying.
“It definitely makes it difficult to miss out a whole session when everyone else is doing qualy practice and things like that,” said Rosberg. “So I really had to build it up in qualifying. In the end I’m quite pleased, fifth place, that was what our car was giving today. Maybe if everything was perfect I could have had fourth, beating Mark, but we didn’t quite manage that.
“But still it’s a good position to start tomorrow, not quite as strong as in Monaco in qualifying it seems, but maybe race pace wise we can beat one or two of the cars in front, and a podium has to be the goal.”
Rosberg is hopeful that Mercedes has got its set-up right: “Strategy is going to be interesting, tyre degradation is going to be crucial, but I think we’re well set up to have a good car in the race tomorrow. It’s quite difficult with the tyres, there’s a lot of sliding around because you have low downforce on the car. And it’s difficult to find the right balance.”
Adam Cooper F1 