Good progress for Williams as both cars make it into Q3
Following a succession of recent development upgrades, the team enjoyed some tangible progress at Valencia today as both AT&T Williams drivers secured top ten grid slots for tomorrow’s European Grand Prix. Nico Hulkenberg and Rubens Barrichello set competitive times throughout this afternoon’s three qualifying rounds, with Nico just edging into P8 ahead of Rubens’ P9 at the end of Q3.
Rubens Barrichello: "It was a good qualifying session for the team. Ninth is a strong position to be starting from, but I could have done better than that if it weren’t for a problem with brake warm up in Q3. I’m looking forward to tomorrow and certainly feel we can achieve a top sixth finish as the car is looking competitive. We are quite happy with the improvements we’ve brought here this weekend. We still need to keep pushing, but this demonstrates that we can be fast."
Nico Hulkenberg: "A positive Saturday; that wasn’t a bad qualifying! No one expected me to be ahead of Rubens today because he’s been quicker than me all weekend. Somehow I pulled out a good lap in Q3 and beat him by a fraction. We’re obviously happy that we have both cars in the top ten, which was the aim. Hopefully we’ll have a good race and get some points tomorrow."
Sam Michael, Technical Director: "To get both cars into Q3 is good progress with the whole car package. Rubens had an issue with glazed brakes, which was a shame as that pushed him down the order. Nico did a good job in qualifying today. We do still have to improve across all areas of the car, and if we do that quickly we'll feature in the top ten more regularly. Rubens will be racing the blown rear wing tomorrow while Nico will run a standard version."
