Second consecutive 4th place for Rosberg
Nico Rosberg scored a second consecutive fourth place at the Hungaroring today, elevating him by two places in the driver’s championship to fifth position. A good baseline pace from the FW31 all weekend, and a crucial defence of his position against a KERS-powered McLaren at turn one provided the essential elements for Nico to build a strong performance on a circuit that witnessed only a few overtaking manoeuvres in 70 laps.
Team-mate Kazuki Nakajima edged closer to securing his first points of the season, but starting the race ninth with limited opportunity to gain position on track, and most of the field running similar tyre and fuel strategies offered little prospect to improve on his start position. The team’s continued thoughts are with Felipe Massa for his recuperation.
Nico Rosberg: "I am quite pleased with the outcome today as it was quite tricky, especially at the start against the KERS cars. Initially I had no chance off the line, but the first corner was quite a big mess and I managed to profit from this and climb back to fifth place, which was important. As the race settled down, I had to manage the tyres cautiously because of graining in both the first and second stint. Given all of these issues, we have to be very happy with fourth place and I am now up to fifth in the championship, although of course this was in part due to the fact that Felipe wasn’t able to start today. Anyway, I am enjoying working with the team and everyone is pushing on really well, so we'll continue to improve if we keep moving in this direction."
Kazuki Nakajima: "After the first lap when I got past Jenson, I couldn’t hold the position and once he had got back past me, it dictated my race – it was a big moment for me and made it very difficult to improve for the rest of the day despite good car pace as I was running in traffic. We just need to keep pushing and one race soon we are going to get the result."
Sam Michael, Technical Director: "It was good to score some points from another fourth place for Nico, although our expectations are going up and we really want to get onto the podium. It was a shame to miss out on a point for Kazuki. Both drivers had good starts and race pace was underlined by Nico’s third fastest lap, so everything is going in the right direction, we just need to start putting away some more points."
