Nico Rosberg has been left frustrated after his final day of running in Barcelona was complicated by tricky driving conditions.
A windy and cold day meant that the drivers struggled to keep their cars stable and to get their tires up to temperature at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
For Rosberg, it was a challenging day, but he still feels that the Mercedes team learned a lot.
“It was so windy out there,” Rosberg said. “That made it so difficult to learn anything because the car was all of the place and variable. One corner it’s different to the next depending on the wind direction.
“So that’s really, really challenging, but okay that’s the way it is for everybody. We still learned quite a lot, especially at the end of the day when the wind died down.
“The whole morning, the tires weren’t really working properly, so everything just came together and was really not nice to drive.”
Rosberg said that Mercedes was still able to complete all of the necessary running on Sunday in Barcelona, filling him with confidence ahead of next week’s final test.
“Today we nailed the programme and that’s really good, no major problems,” he said. “At one point we thought we might have to take the gearbox off, but then they were looking at the numbers and they cranked it up in the garage and looked at the data at the same time to see if there’s any disturbances and everything looked okay. So the gearbox stayed on and I went off again, but there was a bit of a hairy moment though.”
Rosberg finished second in Barcelona on Sunday, finishing just two-tenths of a second shy of pace-setter Romain Grosjean despite posting his best lap on the medium compound tire.
“[I’m] confident, yes,” Rosberg added. “We have a great team now, and we’re keeping a close eye on the opposition because there have been some quite strong times from other teams, so it’s not clear cut at the moment but still I think that we’re in a good position.”
Testing resumes at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on Thursday.
