Another disappointing qualifying session for Williams

AT&T Williams’ participation in this afternoon’s qualifying for the final race of the season, the Brazilian Grand Prix, was short lived with both Nico Rosberg and Kazuki Nakajima forced out of the session in the first knockout zone. The promising pace shown by both drivers in the weekend’s earlier practice sessions was not realised in qualifying; as such, Kazuki lines up in P16 and Nico will take to the ninth row of the grid in 18th place.

Kazuki Nakajima: "It was a difficult qualifying session for the team. The balance of the car was there, but the track conditions were quite different to this morning as the temperature was quite a lot higher and that didn’t help us. I was comfortable with my performance though based on the pace of the car and I didn’t make any mistakes. We just need to find some more speed."

Nico Rosberg: "On the option tyre, my car was really tough to drive. I just generally lacked grip on the rear. This was possibly because I couldn’t warm the tyres up properly due to traffic on my out lap. It could also have been caused by a compromise we made to the set-up before the session in order to help with our race performance."

Sam Michael, Technical Director: "That was a disappointing final qualifying session for 2008. We’ll be looking hard at our race strategy now to see what we can get out of tomorrow. There were no mechanical issues today and the drivers extracted what they could out of the car."