Mercedes technical director Paddy Lowe has apologised to Nico Rosberg, after the German struggled with his car's balance during qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Rosberg will start the race in second behind his teammate Lewis Hamilton, after he suffered from understeer throughout the session.

Lowe told Sky Sports News: "We need to apologise to Nico for Friday; there was a mistake in the configuration of the car we didn't discover unfortunately until the evening. So yesterday he was struggling a bit and we can explain that.

"Today, he was a lot better in P3 with a very similar performance to Lewis. And at times also today. You saw the first run in Q3 when they both ran the used sets they were fairly close. But really Nico was having a lot of problems with front tyre pressure which probably explains some of the coming in and out in terms of relative pace.

"And then in his final lap, he had a lock-up in the final sector, which probably explains most of the gap."

Hamilton beat Rosberg by over half a second.