'Bad' eye not reason for Rosberg mood

A frustrated Nico Rosberg admitted he lost pole by "the blink of an eye" in China.

He was referring to the mere four-hundredths gap to Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton, not the conspicuously red eye he was sporting after qualifying in Shanghai.

Rosberg explained that he has been dealing with the left eye problem for a year.

"One day I will have to do something about it," said the German, "but it just looks bad -- it doesn't bother me."

He was much more bothered by his qualifying defeat, exclaiming "Oh, come on guys!" on the radio when he was informed of the tiny gap.

But he was also upset with his engineers, who told him to go faster than he wanted on his 'out-lap'.

"It was not ideal to put me under pressure like that," said Rosberg.

The 29-year-old's frustration in missing out to Hamilton in China could be because Mercedes has decided beating Ferrari is more important than ensuring total driver 'equality' when it comes to race strategies.

"Last year, we wanted to be as fair and neutral as possible," said team boss Toto Wolff.

"But now we will have to react to the improved competition from Ferrari with our strategies.

"The consequence could be that one of the drivers after the race is maybe not happy and feels disadvantaged," he told Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

"But if it means the race victory or not, we will have to live with it."

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Leopold

Leopold Pleijsier founded F1-Fansite.com in 2001 and has followed Formula 1 since the early 1980s. He writes about daily F1 news, race weekends, drivers and the sport’s history.

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