• Canadian Grand Prix

Mercedes making progress with race pace

Nico Rosberg was happy with the progress the team made in FP2 despite setting the 19th fastest time © Sutton Images

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• Report:
• Alonso quickest in disjointed session
  

• Race:
• Canadian Grand Prix

• Championship:
• FIA Formula One World Championship

• Drivers:
• Ross Brawn
• |
• Nico Rosberg
• |
• Michael Schumacher

• Teams:
• Mercedes

Mercedes is happy with its long-run pace after spending Friday's second practice session for the Canadian Grand Prix analysing the car on heavy fuel loads.

Nico Rosberg was fastest in the morning practice session, but just 19th fastest in the afternoon with Michael Schumacher 20th. However, there was no cause for concern as the team was focusing on analysing tyre degradation on heavier fuel loads - its Achilles heel at recent races.

"We've had a good day to start our Canadian Grand Prix weekend," team principal Ross Brawn said. "Today's running was obviously interrupted with the various incidents, however we have focused very much on our race preparation, particularly this afternoon. The loss of track time meant that we did not complete any low fuel running, but from our long run work, the car looks reasonable."

Nico Rosberg said the tyres were holding up well on a track known for high levels of degradation.

"It was a positive start to the weekend, and we seem to have made some progress with our race pace," he said. "I felt comfortable with the car today and we completed a lot of laps despite the interruptions, which was good. The tyres are holding up well so it will be interesting to see the comparison once we start working on low fuel tomorrow. Overall, I'm quite happy."

Michael Schumacher added: "We covered quite a lot of work today. Obviously we didn't do any times on lower fuel and just concentrated on high fuel due to the red flags shortening our programme this afternoon. That's why we are at the opposite end of the timesheets to this morning, when it looked encouraging for a weekend that we did not enter with the highest expectations. We will now sit and analyse our performance and hope for another encouraging day tomorrow."

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