Mercedes' Nico Rosberg felt he had an exceptional qualifying session in Sochi, and will start the Russian Grand Prix on pole Mercedes' Nico Rosberg felt he had an exceptional qualifying session in Sochi, and will start the Russian Grand Prix on pole

Nico Rosberg has admitted Mercedes can no longer claim Ferrari are 'close' after beating their rivals by almost a second in qualifying for the Russian GP.

The Silver Arrows have stubbornly insisted Ferrari are causing them anxiety in 2016 despite Rosberg winning the opening three rounds of the campaign.

And despite a mistake in Q3 preventing him posting an even quicker time after recording the two fastest sectors of qualifying on his final run, Rosberg was still over seven tenths clear of second-placed Sebastian Vettel in Sochi on Saturday.

"Here it looks like they are not very close," Rosberg told Sky Sports F1 after qualifying.

"We've been saying all this time over the last few weeks that they are very close, very close, maybe we need to stop saying that for now because this weekend is looking very, very strong from our side. We look to have opened the gap."

The championship leader described his Saturday performance as "exceptional" and is in confident mood as he goes in search of a seventh consecutive grand prix victory.

"The first lap was good, but I had a bit more fuel so the second one would have been the quicker one," he added.

"But I was very confident that the first one was good enough for pole as I saw the gaps in Q2. It was feeling awesome out there so I went for an all or nothing lap and it didn't work out unfortunately.

"But it was a qualifying that was quite exceptional for me. Feeling wise the car came together, the balance, it was really good."

While Rosberg celebrated, there was more unreliability on the other side of the Mercedes garage as Lewis Hamilton suffered a repeat of his power unit problem from China.

However, Rosberg doesn't feel he has to capitalise now as he has faith the technical problems will not strike his W06 machine.

"I don't really think I need to maximise now because I have confidence in the team to sort out the issues that we are having at the moment," Rosberg said when asked if he feared suffering similar reliability problems later in the year.

"I don't think about such problems, I just try to make the most of it and focus on the things that I can influence."