Nico Rosberg: “Difficult weekend for us, we are not the favorites here”

Best performance at the end of the day for Mercedes di Nico Rosberg, which closed the second session of Free tests with a time of 1:44.152, ahead of the Ferrari di Raikkonen and Red Bull di Max Verstappen. The German pilot, who a Singapore he only managed to get on the podium once, at the time of Williams, knows that winning on this track with the two rivals behind her will not be easy at all, and is preparing for a challenging weekend.

“This circuit is the best of the entire calendar for the Red Bull and for Ferrari, so it will always be a difficult weekend for us. Even on the race pace we saw that they are fast, and as far as we are concerned on the flying lap last year too we were ok, but then on Saturday we found ourselves nowhere. We must continue to work on it, believe in it and hope that tomorrow goes well."

Rosberg, who worked a lot with the soft compound in the afternoon, when asked if there had been any problems managing the softer tyres, he specified: "No, even with the purple compound it actually went well today on the flying lap, and then we it was surprising that they also had good grip on the race pace, we didn't think so", concluded the German.