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Q & A with Nico Rosberg

Q. Second fastest today and front row tomorrow - happy with your day's work today?

Nico Rosberg: No and yes - yes because the front row is always great, and no because I had the same time three times, and three times I was two tenths away from Heikki. I think he was twice on the same time, and very much on the edge, and I was too. When you have that small gap then afterwards you always think that in those three laps there will always be somewhere that you made a small mistake or could have better, and then you think if I'd been better and got it together it would have been enough.

But I'm very happy, and it was going to have to be something very special to take pole today - it just didn't happen, and we were lacking just one or two tenths from him today. It's quite surprising how they have come from one and a half seconds back to just two tenths quicker, but it's such a different track and they probably just did a good job on finding the right set up for this track - because it's so different everyone is starting from scratch really, although they have experience from Formula 3000 but that doesn't really matter - I think they just did a good job on finding a set up, and that's the reason really.

Q. Were you surprised that you and Heikki were so far ahead of everyone else?

Rosberg: It was surprising, yeah - lucky for him I was there with him, because otherwise it would have looked suspicious! But it was really surprising to me - I had a really good first run on my first set, but it was only 1.2 seconds faster than this morning, and I thought 'oh shit, this is not good - you're going to have to push a lot more on the second set.' Then I saw the times and saw them all back there, and I thought they were all on used tyres and so nothing has changed, but it was really surprising, yeah.

Q. No one seems to know why the gap is there, including Scott Speed.

Rosberg: Well look at Scott - he improved six tenths with new tyres - what is that? You've got to improve more than that, or else don't be surprised - with new tyres you have to pull out more than six tenths, with Formula One running between the sessions and this morning being with a dirty track. That's just saying I think our time was not so surprising, but more that they were so much slower.

Q. Do you think the heat made a difference in the lap times?

Rosberg: Maybe, yeah - the gap from old to new [tyres] was fairly small anyway - just one and a bit seconds, and that's not normal - so it may have been a part of it, yeah.

Q. With you and Heikki on the front row tomorrow, and nothing much between your times, what do you think is going to happen?

Rosberg: I don't know - the start is going to be important, the run down to the first corner is going to be important, and then we'll see.

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