Rosberg's best Friday of 2014

Nico Rosberg knows that even back-to-back wins in Brazil and Abu Dhabi aren't guaranteed to be enough to win the world championship.

But with taking those two wins a necessary target, Rosberg could not have picked a better time to emerge as the lead Mercedes driver in Friday practice.

For not only was the German unbeaten on single-lap pace, topping both Friday sessions for the first time this season, and topping FP2 for only the third time all year, but he was also the stronger Mercedes driver on single-lap pace.

Rosberg had an advantage of 0.213 seconds over Hamilton on single-lap pace, setting his best lap on his first flier while Hamilton made a mistake on his first and then closed the gap on his second.

Hamilton was faster in the twisty middle sector, but Rosberg had the advantage in the first and last sectors. Here's how their three laps divided up:

ROSBERG

Sector 1 Sector 2 Sector 3 Time
18.258s 37.225s 16.640s 1m12.123s

HAMILTON

Sector 1 Sector 2 Sector 3 Time
18.273s 37.135s 16.739s 1m12.336s

This is more encouraging for Hamilton, as it suggests only in the last sector was he really giving away significant time to Rosberg. Whether this is a consequence of his rear tyres going away on his second flier is unclear, but Hamilton was relatively happy after the session and suggested he just didn't hook up a representative lap.

Analysing the long-run pace is tricky. The session was interrupted by two red flags while cars were doing work on the soft rubber, so this should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Hamilton completed seven flying laps on his soft run, and Rosberg 10, with both being interrupted by the red flag.

Looking at the seven-lap comparison, Rosberg was on average 0.401s per lap faster than Hamilton. Here's how the runs compare:

As the graph shows, Hamilton's first counting lap is very slow and if you ignore that and compare only laps 2-7 for the pair, the gap closes to three tenths.

Even so, as the middle laps show, the pace advantage enjoyed by Rosberg is consistent, although at the end of the run his pace drops off dramatically for a lap.

All of this bodes well for Rosberg's chances of turning the tables on Hamilton. But given that it has been one-way traffic in favour of the world championship leader of late, everything could very easily change on Saturday and Sunday.

"It is [difficult to gauge progress] particularly through the long runs, but it's not a big issue," said Hamilton. "Today's just about trying to understand the car and where the balance is."

Hamilton didn't string everything together for a lap in free practice © LAT

Rosberg was content with the progress made, and seemed to adapt well to the impact of the resurfacing of the track.

"Today was a normal day," he said. "The unusual thing is that the asphalt is completely new and it's very different to last year, much smoother.

"That has a big impact on the car. Initially, the balance was completely wrong with massive understeer.

"We just had to adapt the setting, and what you can do is make the front end softer and the rear much stiffer so you make the rear work harder.

"The worked out and I felt quite comfortable on one lap. And on long runs, it was extremely hot."

GARY ANDERSON: "Rosberg can't really control the championship situation. With the constructors' championship already won, all he can do is look after himself, win both in Brazil and Abu Dhabi and hope that the battle between the other competitors and Hamilton helps him out.

"Looking at what happened today, this does appear to be a genuinely good day for Rosberg. Overall he looked good on the fast laps and the long runs.

"He has absolutely nothing to lose, only two wins will do while Hamilton just needs to keep his nose clean.

"So Rosberg just has to go for it and do the best job that he can. Perhaps that situation has helped him to attack Friday practice at Interlagos in the right way."

RAW PACE

As usual, Mercedes was the fastest car overall, with Rosberg's best time 0.573s faster than the quickest non-Silver Arrows machine.

Today, that was Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari, with Red Bull the third-fastest ahead of Williams.

As is often the case on Friday, Toro Rosso also showed strong pace. But this is often not replicated as the weekend progresses.

LONG-RUN PACE

Given the red flag interruptions, the data on long-run pace is very sketchy but at least gives a vague idea of the relative pace.

Where possible, six counting laps (with anomalous slow laps removed) are used to calculate the average lap speed.

But in the case of Raikkonen (four) and Valtteri Bottas (five), this was not possible.

What really stands out is that it was Daniel Ricciardo who was actually a little faster than Rosberg on long-run pace.

While this is not unusual, for Ricciardo has proved excellent in terms of tyre management, and does not mean that Red Bull necessarily has the fastest race car, it suggests that the Australian is well-placed to be best of the rest.

Average laptime
1 Red Bull (Ricciardo), 1m15.815s
2 Mercedes (Rosberg), +0.312s
3 Ferrari (Raikkonen), +0.385s
4 Williams (Bottas), +0.971s
5 Toro Rosso (Kvyat), +1.712s
6 Lotus (Maldonado), +1.728s
7 McLaren (Button), +1.925s
8 Sauber (Sutil), +2.026

Ricciardo could spring a surprise in the Mercedes battle come race day © LAT

GARY ANDERSON: "Rosberg should be very happy to see Ricciardo being so quick because he needs other drivers to take points off Hamilton.

"The single-lap pace of the Red Bull was not great, but he did his run a little earlier than Rosberg so maybe that stretched the gap. On long-run pace, he looks in good shape.

"Ricciardo has the freedom to attack. He is as good as certain of finishing third in the drivers' championship as Valtteri Bottas is 74 points behind with 75 remaining to play for.

"And he will want to finish the season strongly to carry that momentum into the winter, ahead of being the undisputed leader of the team next year."

TYRES

Concerns about a combination of the new track surface and high temperatures mean that there are questions marks about how long the life of the soft-compound Pirellis will be in race conditions.

GARY ANDERSON: "When you are in the situation of running on a track that has been resurfaced, it will change very significantly during the weekend so you have to take that into account.

"By Sunday, it will have changed dramatically and the tyre deg will be very different to how it was on Friday, so teams will avoid jumping to conclusions about strategy.

"They will have a better idea after Saturday, but the track will keep changing all the way to the chequered flag in the race, so that's something they will all have to keep an eye on.

"It's s circuit where tyre degradation can cost you a lot of laptime. There are a few places where you are front-limited, but mostly it's rear-limited at Interlagos and it's easy to overwork the tyres in the twisty middle part of the track.

"Poor traction out of the last real corner [Juncao] onto the long run to Turn 1 will cost you serious laptime, so if the tyres do get away from you there will be a big drop-off.

"So the cars will have to be set up to have understeer to protect the rears for a little longer."