Formula 1

Nico Rosberg Monaco 2013

MERCEDES AMG PETRONAS ON TOP OF THE TIME SHEETS AS EXPECTED WHILST RED BULL STRUGGLES…

Nico Rosberg topped both practice sessions in Monaco today with Lewis Hamilton second fastest this afternoon.

• Nico´s fastest time in the afternoon session was one second quicker than the fastest lap in P2 last year –

• The drivers completed a total of 154 laps today, equivalent to almost two race distances –

• The focus of the sessions was on basic set-up work, circuit familiarisation and tyre evaluations –

• During P2, Nico and Lewis both completed runs of over 20 laps on the super soft compound –

Nico Rosberg
A very productive day for us. We completed a lot of laps and I feel comfortable in the car. It seems that we are quick again on one lap but we have been working hard again to make improvements to our race pace. It will be interesting to see where we are compared to the others over the weekend as it´s not really representative today. It feels great to be back here driving around the streets of my home city here again and I´m very much looking forward to the weekend.

Lewis Hamilton
It´s been a positive start for us today and I´m pleased with what we have achieved here in Monaco. We did some good long run work this afternoon and the supersoft tyres seem to be performing well. I need to improve my one lap pace however, partly with the balance of the car and partly from me. The car is almost there and the pace looks good so we´ll look at the data tonight and work on those areas which can still be improved before the weekend.

Ross Brawn
Today was a pretty good day for us and it´s always nice to come through the first day of the Monaco weekend cleanly. The true test will come on Sunday but I´m pleased with the technical work that we covered in the two practice sessions today. Both Nico and Lewis, along with our engineers, did a very good job working together through the programme. A pleasing start to the weekend and now we have to make the right decisions for Saturday and Sunday

Toto Wolff
It was a good solid first day for us: lots of laps, no incidents and good lap times. Nico and Lewis both looked quick and comfortable and we seemed able to keep the tyres in good condition on our long runs this afternoon. Our rivals will be very strong on both Saturday and Sunday, so we will get our heads down and keep working to build on this good start.

MARK WEBBER

“I think traditionally we’re never too electric here on Thursday’s, so today was actually one of the better ones we’ve had in the last few years. You’ve got to be very, very focused here; concentration is very, very high. It’s a challenging venue to pull everything together; we want to obviously get short run performance as well as gaining short and long run data, which I think we’ve got. There are some quick cars out there; we’ve seen that on Saturday at the last few GPs. All in all, a reasonably smooth day for us, we’ve got plenty to go through now.”

SEBASTIAN VETTEL

“I think generally it was okay. Unfortunately we lost quite a lot of time in the afternoon while we were making some changes, but that can happen on Friday, or in this case Thursday. We’d like to be a little bit more competitive, so we need to try and find some more lap time. We had a KERS issue this afternoon, so I didn’t use the system during P2. The guys know what the problem was with that.”

Pos Driver                Team                   Time       Gap     Laps
 1. Nico Rosberg          Mercedes               1m14.759s            45
 2. Lewis Hamilton        Mercedes               1m15.077s  + 0.318s  50
 3. Fernando Alonso       Ferrari                1m15.196s  + 0.437s  37
 4. Felipe Massa          Ferrari                1m15.278s  + 0.519s  38
 5. Mark Webber           Red Bull-Renault       1m15.404s  + 0.645s  41
 6. Kimi Raikkonen        Lotus-Renault          1m15.511s  + 0.752s  38
 7. Romain Grosjean       Lotus-Renault          1m15.718s  + 0.959s  10
 8. Jenson Button         McLaren-Mercedes       1m15.959s  + 1.200s  39
 9. Sebastian Vettel      Red Bull-Renault       1m16.014s  + 1.255s  32
10. Paul di Resta         Force India-Mercedes   1m16.046s  + 1.287s  42
11. Adrian Sutil          Force India-Mercedes   1m16.349s  + 1.590s  43
12. Sergio Perez          McLaren-Mercedes       1m16.434s  + 1.675s  40
13. Nico Hulkenberg       Sauber-Ferrari         1m16.823s  + 2.064s  42
14. Pastor Maldonado      Williams-Renault       1m16.857s  + 2.098s  40
15. Esteban Gutierrez     Sauber-Ferrari         1m16.935s  + 2.176s  44
16. Daniel Ricciardo      Toro Rosso-Ferrari     1m17.145s  + 2.386s  37
17. Jean-Eric Vergne      Toro Rosso-Ferrari     1m17.184s  + 2.425s  42
18. Valtteri Bottas       Williams-Renault       1m17.264s  + 2.505s  46
19. Jules Bianchi         Marussia-Cosworth      1m17.892s  + 3.133s  40
20. Charles Pic           Caterham-Renault       1m18.212s  + 3.453s  43
21. Max Chilton           Marussia-Cosworth      1m18.784s  + 4.025s  40
22. Giedo van der Garde   Caterham-Renault       1m19.031s  + 4.272s  30

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