This has been a strange rookie year for Nico Rosberg, who has endured a roller coaster ride of form at Williams. He started of course in the best possible fashion with that brilliant drive to seventh, via fastest lap, in Bahrain. Had he not tagged Nick Heidfeld at the first corner, he could have finished fourth. Then there was a second-row qualifying performance in Malaysia, spoiled a little when he got caught up with teammate Mark Webber at the first corner.
Since then, highlights have been few. At the Nurburgring, an engine penalty saw him start from the back, and again he came through to take seventh. But strangely enough, those two drives through the field represent his only scores to date, although there have been a couple of near misses with ninths.
In Germany, he simply got it wrong on the first lap. He's also been a victim of the unreliability that has likewise hampered Webber's season. Twice Rosberg gone off the road after a mechanical gremlin struck; in Monaco, the same exhaust failure and fire that stopped Webber, and in the wet in Hungary, he had an electrical problem. But there have also been races where he's just been off the pace, notably Indianapolis and Magny-Cours, despite Bridgestone's apparent advantage at those venues.