Rosberg welcomes trouble-free day

Both Rosberg and teammate Kazuki Nakajima suffered mechanical problems during practice in Melbourne, meaning they had to play catch-up for the remainder of the weekend.

Despite that, Rosberg scored his first F1 podium and Nakajima finished in seventh place.

Both men had more running today, with Rosberg going on to set the 12th fastest time.

"The track is quite different here now because of the new asphalt, so in many ways I think everyone is starting from zero," said Rosberg. "From our point of view, it was a good step forward over Australia to get a full day of track running today.

"Performance-wise, the car seems pretty good straight out of the box here and I am pretty happy with what we achieved.

"We tried plenty of things just to see what was what, but the track ramped up a lot in the second session in particular, so it will make the set-up call quite difficult, but I am pretty satisfied with our work today."

Nakajima was unable to escape trouble, however, as he suffered a clutch problem in the morning.

The Japanese, however, was pleased with his day.

"It was quite hot today! Of course it was a shame to miss some track time this morning with the problem we had, but nevertheless, I still managed to record fifteen timed laps in the last 30 minutes of the morning session, so I didn't miss out on much," he said.

"We still have to address a few things on the car tomorrow in terms of the set-up, but it improved throughout the second session and towards the end of the 90 minutes, I was starting to find a better balance."