Rosberg has finished on the podium at all three races so far this season
Nico Rosberg admitted complacency got the better of him during qualifying for tomorrow’s Bahrain Grand Prix. For the second time in three races, he will start behind the Ferrari of Sebastian Vettel as well as his team mate.
The Mercedes driver told Sky Sports F1 “I underestimated Sebastian’s speed and also how much it would cost me by taking it easy in Q2 on the tyres which I will be starting the race on. I just lacked a rhythm as a result and that’s where it went wrong today.”
In order to encourage teams to run in the final part of qualifying, the FIA introduced a rule last season giving all drivers in Q3 an additional set of tyres for exclusive use in that session. As a result, drivers that qualify in the top 10 have to start the race on the tyres they set their fastest Q2 lap on.
It could therefore be beneficial for drivers to slightly preserve their Q2 tyres for the race – but it appears by preserving them a bit too much Rosberg failed to get into the swing of things when it came to a flat out lap.
“I didn’t push enough in qualifying and I thought too much about the race.”
2014 saw Rosberg claim his first pole position of the year at Bahrain, and he would would go on to claim the pole position trophy last season as well as finishing runner up in the drivers’ championship. This season, the 29 year old German has failed to qualify or finish ahead of his team mate.
The Mercedes driver was also lucky to be lining up third – one tenth more and Kimi Raikkonen would also have been ahead of the German.
After a stunning race at Sakhir last year, let’s hope the Ferraris can keep up with the Mercs and provide us with a four way battle for the win.
Images courtesy of Mercedes F1 Team
