Friday: Top 5 goal for Mercedes
Mercedes has made a leap forward since the first two Grand Prix, as demonstrated by Nico Rosberg's two races. Despite some issues, Michael Schumacher has also shown this. Now they just need to make the necessary step forward to climb onto one of the three podium steps.
Nico Rosberg – 3rd then 6th
« It was a good day in terms of settings, and we learned several things about our car. Of course, it’s difficult to say where we really stand because the hard tires weren’t working well, and there was a lot of wind. We had a good long run, and our car preparation is certainly better than in the last race. The improvements are working quite well, and thanks for that to the guys at the factory.
Michael Schumacher – 7th, then 7th
We had a reasonable Friday and clearly showed that our improvements seemed to work well. After that, the other teams also improved, so without having the chance to look deeper into the data, I would say that we should be fighting for the third row. We will continue to work hard on our performance for tomorrow.
Ross Brawn
« We have a number of new parts on the car that needed to be evaluated today, and we managed to do that. It was a learning program and, as always, we will look into the data tonight and decide what our approach will be for the rest of the weekend. We need to find more performance in the car, but today is a reasonable baseline. »
Norbert Haug
A first day with a total of 126 laps for Michael and Nico gives us the opportunity to learn a lot about the new hard tire, which we hadn’t tested yet on this track. At first, it seemed challenging to make the tire work for most teams, but we learned a lot today, which will be helpful for finding the right settings for tomorrow and Sunday. Our goal for the rest of the weekend is to still be in the top 5 as in the last two races.
