Rosberg aims to seize Monza chance

The Grove squad have struggled to fight near the sharp end of the grid in the second half of the season, but Rosberg reckons they could be quite competitive this weekend thanks to the low-downforce nature of the circuit.

The German driver kicked off his weekend in promising style, posting the fifth fastest time of the day.

"I think we have started the weekend well," said Rosberg. "In the morning session in the wet, we were pretty quick and I felt very comfortable in the car, so even if it rains in the race, we can be pretty strong here.

"We weren't too bad this afternoon in the drier conditions either, and despite the weather over the day, we managed to fit everything in, so practice was really well managed by the team.

"The car has good balance, but of course we still need to fine tune this a little bit. In terms of performance, we are definitely looking better than we have done of late. The Toyota engine is making a good contribution and because the car is performing well for this one-off low downforce race, we need to make the best of it."

Teammate Kazuki Nakajima was also positive about his car's performance, although the Japanese admitted he missed more dry running time.

"The conditions have been quite tricky today, but thankfully we found time to do some dry running towards the end of the afternoon practice," said Nakajima.

"The overall feeling from the car is not at all bad and the lap time was coming, but I never really had enough clear track to get my times down. Tomorrow's last practice before qualifying will be important for me to continue the progress we made today."