A lot of work ahead of Silverstone for Williams
AT&T Williams brought home both of its Williams Cosworth FW33s in today’s European Grand Prix. Rubens Barrichello started from P13 on the Option tyre and with a three stop strategy. A smooth start promoted him to 12th, where he ultimately finished the race after a solid drive.
Originally on a two stop strategy, Pastor Maldonado started from P15 but lost position off the line leaving him to fight the remaining 56 laps from P22. Tyre issues forced him into an early pitstop on lap 10 and onto a three stop strategy. In a race with a full field of finishers, Pastor was unable to recover higher than P18.
Sam Michael, Technical Director: "We needed a little more performance to get into the points today. Toro Rosso’s two stop and Sauber’s one stop strategies allowed them to jump ahead of us. Rubens drove a consistent race, racing hard with the cars around him. We had a poor start on Pastor’s car and then unusually low tyre pressures on his first set of Prime tyres, but his pace improved considerably on the next set. We have a lot of work to do between now and Silverstone to allow for the rule changes in respect to the exhaust."
Rubens Barrichello: "We did not have the car underneath us today. I really pushed myself to the limit though and I’m happy with what I delivered. The team have worked hard to bring lots of upgrades to the car so I’m sorry that we didn’t do better. I do think that we should be pleased that we beat some better cars today."
Pastor Maldonado: "We had a slow start so I lost positions off the line. I then couldn’t make the Prime tyre work for me in the first stint so I had to come in early to change them. The early stop forced us onto a three stop strategy. It was too difficult to make it work from where we were in the field though and I couldn’t recover. We’ll now move on to Silverstone where I will keep fighting to get some points."
