Nico Rosberg blamed his enforced need for a hasty change of Mercedes engine for the loss of speed that resulted in him qualifying only fourth on Saturday for Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix.
His Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton claimed his 11th pole in 12 races by topping the session, with a new upgraded engine, followed by the Ferraris of Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel.
It was Rosberg’s most disappointing qualifying effort of the season and a relative loss of power, on a circuit where it is essential, appeared to be the clearest reason.
Rosberg was forced to change from the upgraded new engine introduced by Mercedes for this race after his unit developed a problem on Saturday morning. He insisted that was his problem, not the handling issues.
"We had to go back to an engine that's done six races," said Rosberg. "And every kilometre you lose a bit of power, especially in Monza, which is the absolute power track for engine. It's very disappointing that it happened exactly here, for me.
"That's a really big compromise then and that's the reason why I'm fourth today, which makes the race tough, because I'm also a bit slower than I could be in the race as well. It's not ideal and it's going to be difficult."
But Mercedes non-executive chairman Niki Lauda disagreed with his driver and claimed, instead, that handling problems were the reason for Rosberg's failure to qualify on the front row.
"Nico was not down on power," said the three-time world champion Austrian. "He had handling problems – he had too much under-steer he complained about it.
"He couldn't get the car to handle properly for his way of driving and this made a huge difference. The surprise for me, and everybody, was the Ferrari performance.
"They really came up to a good top speed and the engine improvement has been shown now, surprisingly enough. It's impressive what they've done with their engine here."
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