Five-place penalty for Rosberg

Nico Rosberg will take a five-place grid penalty for Sunday’s German Grand Prix after his team was forced to change the gearbox of his car following the British Grand Prix.

“Unfortunately, we have to change my race gearbox here as a precaution after discovering an issue after Silverstone,” Rosberg said on Friday afternoon. “So I will receive a five-place penalty, which is a shame for our home race but I will push hard to gain a good result. As we have seen this season, a lot can happen in the race.”

Rosberg ran seventh quickest in a dry morning session but climbed to second in the afternoon session, ending the day just 0.088 seconds behind Pastor Maldonado, the duo setting their times on intermediate tyres as the track began to dry midway through the session.

"We learned a lot today as we were able to test in the different track conditions, and use the wet, intermediate and dry tyres. So I guess we are well prepared for whatever the weekend brings,” Rosberg concluded.

It was a more difficult second session for team-mate Michael Schumacher. After finishing fourth in the morning, the German, lost control of his Mercedes at Turn 12 late in the afternoon session and crashed heavily, damaging both the front and back of his car.

Afterwards, he admitted the incident had been because of a lapse in concentration.

"The way I ended the second session was obviously not part of the plan and I’m sorry that my mistake has given my guys even more work to do this evening,” he said, “I simply slid off track because I lost a little concentration: we were talking on the radio and I was altering some settings at the same time. But that’s all part of the game.

“Overall, the session went OK, even though we didn’t do too much running in the first session because the conditions were a bit too inconsistent,” he added. “I think that qualifying will probably be wet tomorrow, so today’s weather was useful in that respect. Now we need to do more work on the computer to tease out the insights we weren’t able to get from our track running.”