- United States Grand Prix - Mercedes
Rosberg 'underestimated' tyre issues
Nico Rosberg said that he "underestimated" the tyre issues that he would have during qualifying for the United States Grand Prix.
While team-mate Lewis Hamilton qualified in fifth place, Rosberg will start from 13th place after dropping out in Q2 by a comfortable margin. Explaining what had been the problem, Rosberg said he didn't realise how much his race set-up would cause him to lack tyre temperature over one flying lap.
"As always I worked towards the race because tomorrow's going to be a tough race with the heat and the likely one stop, so I worked towards that and just underestimated how bad it was going to be in qualifying," Rosberg said. "Everybody, my group, as a team we all just underestimated it and so was very slow because I didn't work the tyres hard enough today in qualifying. The tyres were not working properly, so you just drop off the curve and don't go anywhere, and it's a complete mess to drive."
Rosberg also admitted that it would be difficult to make progress through the field from his lowly grid position.
"I'll push and give it everything to try and get a good start; I can make up positions there. Many people are going to be trying to go for the one-stop and so it can be a bit of a train situation throughout the whole race so it's not going to be easy because strategy-wise to get by is going to be tough. You can't really play around much with the strategy, so it's about the start and having good race pace and hoping that other people drop off the tyre curve."
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