• Chinese Grand Prix

Mercedes not optimistic it has closed gap

Nico Rosberg is expecting business as usual on Saturday © Sutton Images

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• Race:
• Chinese Grand Prix

• Championship:
• FIA Formula One World Championship

• Drivers:
• Nico Rosberg
• |
• Michael Schumacher

• Teams:
• Mercedes

Nico Rosberg has played down Mercedes headline lap times in practice at China, saying the car will be no more competitive in Shanghai than it has been at any other circuit this season.

Rosberg set the second fastest time in practice, just 0.25 off pacesetter Lewis Hamilton. In Malaysia Rosberg qualified second after a rain-hit session but could not challenge the Red Bulls in the race, and he sees no reason to think the situation will be any different in China.

"The pattern looks pretty similar to Malaysia in terms of our pace compared to other teams but we'll have to wait and see how it works out tomorrow," he said. "We made good progress on the set-up over the course of the day and tried some new directions which all seemed to work ok. I did lose a little bit of balance with too much oversteer at the end of the afternoon so we need to look into the reasons for that. The long runs were pretty good on my side and with the work that Michael completed, we should be in a good position on our tyre evaluations."

Mercedes chief Norbert Haug agreed the team was not quite ready to challenge the front runners yet.

"Our lap times in race trim did not look too bad in my view and both Nico and Michael have been reasonably quicker with lesser fuel. Having said that, I am not expecting that a lot has changed in terms of performance amongst the teams since the Malaysian Grand Prix a fortnight ago."

But Michael Schumacher, who has been off the pace of Rosberg all year, feels as though his side of the garage had made some gains.

"Today's practice sessions went better than I had expected," he said. "The handling was pretty much ok and it seems that we have made a small step forward. We brought some improvements here including the new rear wing which have helped. So I am quite confident for the rest of the weekend even if the overall ranking will not change much from the first three races. I was a bit unlucky this morning as I had a puncture on my rear left prime tyre so we had to use one from the afternoon's allocation. That meant I only had three new tyres in the second session but it worked out fine in the end."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.