Encouraging Malaysian qualifying for Williams
Rain once again played its part on the track today as this afternoon’s qualifying session for the Malaysian Grand Prix was dominated by showers to the point where Q3 was red flagged after just three minutes.
The team used the weather to its advantage, however, with the pitwall making some decisive strategy calls which ultimately converted both drivers’ strong performance in the wet into P5 for Nico Hulkenberg and P7 for Rubens Barrichello.
Nico Hulkenberg: "Finally we had a bit of a breakthrough today. It was very tight out there and my lap wasn’t perfect so I could have done a little better, but I’m happy where I am and I’m happy for the team as well. The car has proved to be good in wet conditions and I like driving in the wet, so I’m looking forward to the race. A lot will depend on what the weather will do tomorrow though."
Rubens Barrichello: "There are two ways to look at qualifying. The positive is that we are happy as a team, but I don’t think we would have achieved P5 and P7 in a dry session. In hindsight, I should have chosen intermediates for my last run, which would have given me a better lap time. I’m still pleased as we are better prepared for tomorrow."
Sam Michael, Technical Director: "That was a great qualifying result for the team. Both drivers drove well in the conditions and it was encouraging to watch. Furthermore, the engineers made good calls with the windows that they chose to send the cars out in. We'll now look to converting our position to a good race result tomorrow."
