• German Grand Prix - Qualifying

Mercedes stronger in the wet - Schumacher

Michael Schumacher made the most of the wet qualifying session to qualify fourth before Mark Webber's penalty © Sutton Images

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• Report:
• Alonso secures pole at wet Hockenheim
  

• Race:
• German Grand Prix

• Drivers:
• Michael Schumacher

• Teams:
• Mercedes

Michael Schumacher admitted the wet conditions had helped Mercedes secure a top three starting position for the German Grand Prix.

Schumacher qualified in fourth place during the rain-affected qualifying session, but Mark Webber's grid penalty for a gearbox change means he will start third. When asked if Mercedes was more competitive in the dry or the wet, Schumacher said the car was better when it rained but still felt there was the potential for a good race if Sunday stays dry.

"I think it's obvious that in the wet conditions we look more strong than we do in the dry conditions," Schumacher said, "Although if you look at certain pace in the dry we don't look too unreasonable either because I don't think it worked out perfectly well in traffic for myself in Q1, but Nico [Rosberg]'s time wasn't too bad at that time. So for tomorrow definitely we will look better than we had been looking in Silverstone; there's no doubt about this. Do we look good enough to keep our position, to look forwards or do we go backwards? Open question."

With Schumacher only making it through to Q2 by 0.055s right at the end of the first part of qualifying, he revealed a technical problem almost left him in 18th place.

"We had a little technical issue that we had to solve in Q1 - our car wasn't doing what it was supposed to do - but finally we fixed it and we were able to perform. Good for the home crowd, good for our supporters; we have so many people coming here to support us, particularly tomorrow we're going to see lots more so a nice place to start the race."

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