• Australian Grand Prix

Seventh place represents our potential - Schumacher

Michael Schumacher is happy with seventh on the grid © Sutton Images

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• Australian Grand Prix Qualifying

Michael Schumacher thinks his seventh place qualifying position fairly represents where he and Mercedes are in Formula One's pecking order.

Schumacher has found a better car set-up at Albert Park than he did in Bahrain, but has still ended up in the same place on the grid. Nevertheless, he said seventh place was representative of the car's potential and is hoping to make up some ground in an action-packed race on Sunday.

"We had a reasonable qualifying session today and I am ok with the outcome even if I was a bit handicapped by traffic, especially on my final quick lap," he said. "We made some changes with the car after practice this morning which did not work out perfectly. But in general I would guess the ranking that we see now reflects the situation well and our performance is probably the maximum for our car at the moment. Anyhow, we still have a lot in hand for tomorrow's race, and I am on the clean side of the grid for the start. As we all know, a lot can happen over the course of a race."

His team-mate Nico Rosberg qualified one place ahead of Schumacher in sixth but was disappointed with his performance.

"It was a disappointing qualifying today as I had made really good progress during practice with my engineers but didn't do the best job when it mattered," he said. "I made a couple of mistakes on my best lap on the option tyres which cost me three or four tenths. There was more in the car today so it's always frustrating when you don't get the most out of it. It's not typical for me to make such mistakes in qualifying. But that's the way it goes sometimes and sixth position is still a good place to start. We should be stronger in the race and anything can happen tomorrow."

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