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Michael Schumacher believes the nature of the Monaco track might have negated some of Mercedes' rivals' advantages.

But the multiple champion and five-time Monte Carlo winner stopped short of predicting that Mercedes could therefore have its best weekend of 2010 so far, despite admitting he was very happy with the car.

"Things are good and the car definitely handles quite reasonably here," said Schumacher after taking sixth and fifth in today's two sessions.

"Other teams have certain advantages on top speeds and don't take the profit from this here, and therefore the whole field probably comes closer together.

"Sometimes it depends, you think you do but then the car doesn't do exactly what you want to do, and you're not able to prove that.

"I don't know how much fuel any other teams were running in comparison to us.

"I'd guess we are closer together, maybe I'm wrong and maybe they were running lots more fuel than us."

He added that it had not taken him long to reacclimatise to Monte Carlo, four years on from his last Formula 1 appearance there.

"I got back into the rhythm of the track, particularly on the long runs, by the end, and increased the pace again, so I'm quite confident," Schumacher said.

His team-mate Nico Rosberg was also optimistic, having recovered from morning problems to take second in the afternoon.

"We had some sort of a problem on the front upright, a bolt came loose or I'm not sure what," Rosberg explained.

"It took a lot of time to get it fixed, so unfortunately we lost a lot of time to test some things.

"I managed to recover well for sure, because in the afternoon now lap-time wise we're looking quite good, so I'm not too worried."