Rosberg sorry to miss out on seventh

The Williams driver, fast all weekend in practice, will start the race from eighth position after finishing just 0.010 seconds behind Renault's Heikki Kovalainen.

"If you had asked me on Thursday about our likely qualifying performance, I might have told you I wasn't sure that we could be strong here," he said.

"Today my view has changed and I am a bit disappointed I didn't claim P7 by a margin of one hundredth of a second, which, overall, is better than I anticipated.

"It was very close between me and Kovalainen right through Q2 and Q3. Seventh would have been possible today, but we needed to get everything absolutely right. The first six cars ahead of us are on paper too fast to catch tomorrow, but eighth position is not bad and gives us a good chance in the race."

Teammate Alex Wurz endured a disappointing day after struggling with his car's balance, finishing down in 16th position.

Wurz said: "The first session went okay and the car felt fine, in the second session though I was fighting with the balance, which I tried to ignore, but on top of that, I made a few little mistakes which you can't afford when it is so close, so overall I am disappointed.

"We'll see what tomorrow brings."