- Brazilian GP - FP2
Rosberg - Degradation should not be race issue
Nico Rosberg does not think severe tyre degradation will be as much of an issue for the rest of the weekend in Brazil despite it causing a "worry" during Friday practice.
The combination of a hot surface - 54 degrees Celsius in FP2 - and newly-laid asphalt at Interlagos meant drivers struggled with degradation, especially on the soft option tyre. TV cameras picked up shots of a very badly blistered set of softs from Rosberg's car during the afternoon session.
Rosberg says Mercedes had been braced for some tyre degradation and thinks the cooler temperatures later in the weekend should help rectify the problem.
"It was extremely hot; historically they've never seen such hot asphalt temperatures as today on this track," Rosberg said. "Because it's new asphalt somehow it gets hotter, so the tyres were completely blistering, the bubbles which arrive all the way around the track and start falling apart, that's very, very extreme. We haven't seen that very often and that was a bit of a worry today and that's something we need to keep an eye on. But we're expecting it to be cold on Sunday so it should be OK."
Rosberg, who comes into the race looking to narrow team-mate Lewis Hamilton's 24-point championship lead before the double-weighted Abu Dhabi finale, topped both sessions but says Friday was spent trying to find a good balance in tricky conditions.
"Today was quite a normal day; the unusual thing was the asphalt is very different on this track to last year," Rosberg said. "It's much smoother than last year, very different, which has a big impact on the car. Initially the balance was completely wrong, just massive understeer.
"So then we had to adapt the setting and what we can do is make the front end softer and the rear end much harder. That makes the rear works harder and you have less understeer, so that's what we did a little bit. That worked out and I felt quite comfortable. On one lap is was good, then in the long run we put in a lot of fuel, topped it up all the way, then did a lot of laps to practice for Sunday."
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