HOCKENHEIM — Nico Rosberg reveled in his return to home soil by topping the times in Friday's second free practice for this weekend's German Grand Prix.
The in-form German was fastest in the morning session by three-tenths of a second.
And he again dominated in the second session, repeating the feat by four-tenths in the afternoon with a flawless demonstration of smooth precision on the technical Hockenheim track.
Just five days after losing the lead in this year's drivers' championship for the first time, it was a perfect 'bounce-back' by the 31-year-old Mercedes man.
Rosberg clocked a best lap of one minute and 15.614 seconds in the second session to outpace teammate Lewis Hamilton by 0.394 seconds. The Mercedes men were ahead of four-time champion Sebastian Vettel of Ferrari.
Dutch teenager Max Verstappen was fourth ahead of his Red Bull team-mate Daniel Ricciardo and 2007 champion Kimi Raikkonen in the second Ferrari.
Another German Nico Hulkenberg responded to being at home by taking seventh in his Mercedes-powered Force India ahead of 2009 champion Jenson Button of McLaren Honda. Sergio Perez was ninth in the second Force India and two-time champion Fernando Alonso was 10th for McLaren. Hamilton leads Rosberg by six points in the championship after completing a hat-trick of wins at last Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix.
Red flags to replace yellow in qualifying
Red flags will replace waved double yellows in the event of hazardous incidents in qualifying, Formula One's race director Charlie Whiting said Friday.
Whiting made this newly-revised position clear following last weekend's controversy surrounding Nico Rosberg's pole position lap at the Hungarian Grand Prix. The German drove through a waved double yellow zone and only slowed by one-tenth of a second.
The decision means that all drivers on track at the time of an incident that led to a red flag would have to stop. "That's what I intend to do in the future, just to remove any discussion about whether a driver slowed down or not," Whiting said.
"I think most drivers decided to call it a day and stop their attempt at qualifying," he added, referring to the incident at the Hungaroring. "But in Nico's defense, he had only one yellow sector to go through, and that was a short one — whereas the other drivers had two yellow sectors to go through.
"So there is a difference. I just don't want to get into these discussions where you need to try and decide whether a driver has slowed down enough. If you apply the double waved yellow flag rule absolutely to the letter it says you must be prepared to stop."
Stewards at the Hungarian Grand Prix sent the wrong message aby failing to penalise Rosberg, his Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton had claimed.
