• Monaco Grand Prix

Mercedes can challenge in Monaco - Schumacher

Michael Schumacher enjoyed the first day of practice at Monaco © Getty Images

Enlarge

Related Links

• Race:
• Monaco Grand Prix

• Championship:
• FIA Formula One World Championship

• Drivers:
• Michael Schumacher

• Teams:
• Mercedes

Michael Schumacher believes Mercedes is within striking distance of the fastest cars in Monaco, due to the performance-leveling effect of the tight street circuit.

Mercedes have been in a clear fourth position behind Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari in the opening rounds, but after the team set the second and fifth fastest times during free practice in Monte Carlo, Schumacher reckons its rivals' advantages have been negated.

"Today's practice was a lot of fun," he said. "I got back into the rhythm of the track, especially on the long runs, and I think we can be quite confident for tomorrow [Saturday] as the car is definitely quite reasonable to handle. The other teams who have a certain top speed advantage on other tracks at the moment do not have this advantage here, so the whole field comes a bit closer together which will make it a very interesting qualifying in my view. I am looking forward to it."

Nico Rosberg, who was just 0.109 off Fernando Alonso's fastest time on Thursday, agreed with his team-mate.

"We made good progress this afternoon after losing some time in the morning with a pushrod problem that we had to fix," he said. "The lap times looked quite promising in the second session and I felt very comfortable in the car. We were able to improve the set-up continuously and get the tyres working better as the session went on. So everything looks promising after the first day and I'm looking forward to getting on with qualifying on Saturday."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.