Rosberg pins hopes on race strategy

The Williams driver will start from seventh position, but reckons he is likely to stop later in the race than the cars around him, something that left him hopeful of a strong result.

"Qualifying was generally OK," said Rosberg. "I'm in P7 with quite a lot of fuel, possibly more than anybody else around me, so I have a strong strategy for the race.

"There was no point in trying to outqualify the cars with KERS because they will overtake me off the line anyway. I'd prefer to qualify behind them, have more fuel on board and then beat them in the race.

"This track suits our car so we could have a points scoring race tomorrow."

Williams team-mate Kazuki Nakajima finished down in 17th position after suffering a car failure during Q1.

The Japanese driver felt a top ten performance would have been possible.

"We had a failure on my car which caused the engine to cut out during Q1 so I didn't have a chance to show what we could do," he said.

"It's a shame because I think we were strong enough to have been in the top ten today. We have a good race pace, so I just need to use that to my advantage and do my best tomorrow."