Q & A with Nico Rosberg

Although his troubles prompted wild conspiracy theories that Mercedes GP had done all it could to help Schumacher, Rosberg himself is more realistic about what happened - and thinks there must be a simple explanation.

AUTOSPORT heard from Rosberg as he spoke to the media in the build-up to the Monte Carlo event, talking about the Spanish troubles, his world title hopes and why Mercedes GP would find it impossible to favour Schumacher.

Q. You struggled with the balance of the car in Spain. Was that a one-off or do you think there is something inherent about your car upgrades that you didn't like?

Nico Rosberg: It is difficult to say exactly. We put a lot of analysis in, and my engineers and I seem to understand a few things about why it was difficult in general. In the end, one thing is for sure, we had a lot of understeer in the car - which we've had all year. But in Barcelona, with all the long corners, it was particularly difficult. And also with these tyres, there is a big risk of overloading them when you go into a corner, so you need to be very, very careful with all that and it took me a bit of time.

Then eventually I was one tenth away from Michael in qualifying. He drove well and I think I can live with that. In the race it didn't go my way. I had an incident at the start, picked up a lot of mud on the bottom which destroyed my aero, and then it just went from there and was a disaster, so you can't really look at the race. So, that is it really.

Q. There was talk about splitting up in qualifying. Were you in favour?

NR: For sure I was in favour because there will be a lot of cars, but not only that - the main problem is that there are six cars that are very slow. That is probably the bigger issue - so I was in favour, but like it is is fine too. It is going to be very difficult but we will figure it out.

Q. There has been only three days between Barcelona and here. What are you expecting from this weekend?

NR: We did a lot of work in-between to analyse Barcelona, and it is a very different track here. You run a little bit of a different set-up, and we are reverting back to our shorter wheelbase for here, because it is better suited to this track. So I think things can look very different again.

Things can look different also in terms of how far Red Bull Racing was ahead of us, because it is a whole different story here. Other people are likely to not run their F-duct, which will bring us closer as well. So it can and hopefully will be very different here, and I am looking forward to a strong weekend at the moment.

Q. You didn't get any points in Barcelona. How much damage did that do to your world championship hopes?

NR: I am 20 points behind the championship leader at the moment, and the championship leader is not the person who has the fastest car at the moment either. So, for sure in terms of the championship it didn't do very much damage. It is still a long season and I am still in a very, very good position in that respect. The bigger problem is that we were a bit too slow in Barcelona. The gap to Red Bull Racing was very big and from that it seems that we just need to do an even better job with the developments coming through, to really close the gap to the people in front which we haven't managed to do recently.

Q. Do you have any worries that perhaps the upgrades to your car don't suit your style? And could there be a chance that perhaps you don't keep them on the car so you can keep the feeling you had at the start of the year?

NR: No, definitely not. We drive exactly the same way me and Michael, so it is not that you can build something that suits him better than me. The only fact is that I really struggle with understeer, which we have in the car at the moment. But we are looking into that to try to improve it because for sure it is not a good thing for Michael either. It is a bad thing for both of us, and that could be the only thing where I might struggle a bit more in the end.

Q. You have said that you will use the shorter wheelbase here. But what about the rest of the car, has that changed?

NR: The rest of the car is all the same as Barcelona, except for the rear wing where we are also changing it for Monaco. So in actual fact the car is very similar to Barcelona.

Q. Why do you think the Red Bull Racing car is so fast in qualifying but doesn't seem to have that advantage in the race?

NR: I am not sure [Mark] Webber pushed all the way, so we need to be very careful. And saying that, Michael [Schumacher] was 62 seconds away from Mark, which is exactly what the gap was in qualifying too. So I am not sure that is the case at the moment, we will see maybe.

Q. There is a lot of talk about backmarkers in qualifying and splitting the session, but no-one talks about the racing. Will that not be a problem as well?

NR: It is always down to them to do a good job, and until now they have done pretty well considering they are very slow. And I am sure they will be extra careful here. It will never be perfect but I think it will work out.

Q. What is key to a good race here in Monaco?

NR: Qualifying! Qualifying is the key, and to do a good qualifying I think you need to be comfortable in your car around here. You need to have a good combination between mechanical and aero grip for slower speed corners. Even though it is a slower track, the aero still dominates.