Although he is pleased with Mercedes’ progress between the 2011 and 2012 F1 seasons, Friday pace-setter Michael Schumacher admits that more needs to come from the Brackley-based team. The seven-time World Champion has topped the practice timesheets in China, scene of his last race victory five and a half years ago.
“It was a trouble-free day and I am quite happy with how our car is handling so far here,” he began. “The balance of the car was reasonably good and obviously a balanced car contributes a lot to lap time.
“As a team, we are a lot stronger in certain areas this season and we have a much better base to work from, although we are not quite where we want to be with this car yet - but I am confident we will get there. We will now have to look deeper into the data in order to find out where we really are here, but I am looking forward to tomorrow's qualifying.”
Nico Rosberg is yet to out-qualify Schumacher so far this season.
“It's important for us at the moment that we try a lot of different evaluations during practice to improve our race pace,” explained the younger German, having finished practice in fifth position. “So I think it was a decent start to the race weekend today, as we learned quite a few interesting things.
“The conditions were so changeable that it was difficult to take the right decisions in terms of setup work and we struggled a little with the front tyres; that may have been caused by the cold temperatures today and can change very quickly between now and the race, so I am not too concerned.”
As Rosberg is yet to score in 2012 and Schumacher’s best result is tenth last time out in Malaysia, the silver arrows possess just a single point after the opening two races.
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| Pos. | Driver | Team | Time | Laps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. |  M. Schumacher | Mercedes | 01:35.973 | 32 |
| 2. | L. Hamilton | McLaren | 01:36.145 | 29 |
| 3. | S. Vettel | Red Bull | 01:36.160 | 27 |
| 4. | M. Webber | Red Bull | 01:36.433 | 24 |
| 5. | N. Rosberg | Mercedes | 01:36.617 | 31 |
| 6. | J. Button | McLaren | 01:36.711 | 28 |
| 7. | K. Kobayashi | Sauber | 01:36.956 | 28 |
| 8. | P. di Resta | Force India | 01:36.966 | 31 |
| 9. | N. Hulkenberg | Force India | 01:37.191 | 31 |
| 10. | F. Alonso | Ferrari | 01:37.316 | 32 |
| Full results | ||||
| Michael Schumacher | |||
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| More Michael Schumacher photos | |||
| Nico Rosberg | |||
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| More Nico Rosberg photos | |||
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