Rosberg: Everything looks promising

Nico Rosberg: We had a positive start to our weekend here today and we made good progress this afternoon

Mercedes man Nico Rosberg is feeling bullish ahead of qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix after finishing practice today in P2.

Rosberg lost quite a bit of time this morning in the first session when his mechanics had to fix a pushrod problem. Consequently he only completed 11 laps and he ended proceedings in eleventh.

However he bounced back in the afternoon and his best lap, a 1 minute 15.013 seconds left him just 0.109 seconds off Fernando Alonso, who was quickest for Ferrari.

Speaking after Thursday's two 90 minute sessions, Rosberg revealed that he is 'feeling comfortable' with his MGP W01.

"Monaco is a very special and challenging circuit and we had a positive start toour weekend here today," Rosberg stated. "We made good progress this afternoon after losing some time in the morning.

"The lap times looked quite promising in the second session and I felt very comfortable in the car. We were able to improve the set-up continuously and get the tyres working better as the session went on. So everything looks promising after the first day and I'm looking forward to getting on with qualifying on Saturday.

"Team-mate Michael Schumacher meanwhile was also happy and he finished FP1 in sixth and FP2 in fifth. His best time was a 1m 15.143s.

"Today's practice was a lot of fun," said the record-breaking multiple F1 world champion. "You clearly have to say that Monaco is a very special place to drive and I really enjoyed it. I got back into the rhythm of the track, especially on the long runs, and I think we can be quite confident as the car is definitely quite reasonable to handle.

"The other teams who have a certain top speed advantage on other tracks at the moment do not have this advantage here, so the whole field comes a bit closer together which will make it a very interesting qualifying in my view. I am looking forward to it.

"Mercedes boss, Norbert Haug added: "Quite a promising start to the weekend for us today and certainly a different picture from what we saw last Sunday in Barcelona.

"Nico and Michael's lap times on both types of tyres with lesser fuel as well as during race simulation runs looked not bad at all. There is definitely more work to do before Saturday but so far so good."

Source: Crash.net