Rosberg cautious despite solid start

"I think we've shown ourselves to be a little bit more competitive here than we have at other tracks," said the Williams driver after posting the eighth quickest time of the day.

"That doesn't necessarily mean we'll be further up the grid tomorrow, but we might be a little bit closer. We carried out some productive set-up work today which has given us some interesting results.

"In terms of tyres, it's pretty clear which way we'll go, which is positive as well. The direction we'll go with other variables like rear wing level will depend on the weather forecast and the likelihood of rain."

Rosberg was less than 0.5 seconds off the pace, with teammate Kazuki Nakajima completing a promising start for Williams as he also finished in the top ten.

The Japanese driver was pleased with his day's work.

"Today went quite well," he said. "We made some good progress on the set-up of the car, which is positive, but we still need to find some more performance as we have to improve before qualifying tomorrow."