• Monaco Grand Prix - FP2

Tyres still a problem - Rosberg

Nico Rosberg was quickest in both sessions on Thursday © Getty Images

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• Report:
• Rosberg and Hamilton lead the way in practice
  

• Race:
• Monaco Grand Prix

• Drivers:
• Nico Rosberg

• Teams:
• Mercedes

Nico Rosberg said Mercedes is still suffering from tyre problems on long runs ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix.

Having set the fastest time in both sessions, Rosberg has cemented Mercedes' place as the pre-race favourites to take pole position. However, despite completing 27 laps on the super-soft tyre on heavy fuel in FP2, Rosberg said his optimism is tempered by the problems Mercedes has been having with tyre wear.

"Generally I'm pleased with today," Rosberg said. "It was a good day going in the right direction, I feel comfortable in the car. The thing is first of all we don't know how much fuel the other people had for one lap - we know we're more or less in the hunt for a good result in qualifying but we don't know what the other people were running - and the other thing is our long run pace. It's still a concern with tyre management, we're starting to understand a bit better but there are still some issues that we haven't fully understood so that's still going to be a problem."

Rosberg also said the rear tyres overheating remained Mercedes' biggest challenge.

"They were going off; the usual that we've had in the last couple of races. That's what we need to focus on and that's going to be the main difficulty for the race because the stints are going to be very long with very few pit stops.

"It's definitely very few stops in the race; two stops and maybe one stop. You just have to try to get the degradation as good as possible and that will really help to have a successful race."

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