Nico Rosberg insists he will not be thinking about his championship lead when he approaches Turn 1 despite being beaten to pole position for the U.S. Grand Prix by Lewis Hamilton.
Rosberg is 33 points up on Hamilton with four races to go, meaning he does not have again this season to claim the championship. On Thursday Rosberg insisted he will not be happy to settle for second in the coming races and he reiterated that mindset after qualifying, where he finished 0.216s behind his teammate.
Asked if his big championship lead will be on his mind as he approaches Turn 1, Rosberg said: "For me, I'm not thinking about all those things -- I just want to win the race tomorrow. I've never been able to win the U.S. Grand Prix and that's what I'm going to try and do. I'm fully focused on that."
Rosberg was losing most time to Hamilton in the opening sector but he says there was nothing in particular he was struggling with.
"It was nothing specific. I just preferred sector two and three today and that's it, Lewis was just quicker in sector one - pretty simple. It was quite a good lap I did, nevertheless. Pretty annoying when Lewis came over the line, I could see on the TV that he beat me to it. But that's the way the way it goes sometimes.
"Nevertheless as we've seen this year qualifying isn't all-important so from P2 I still have a great chance tomorrow."