Only 13th and 14th for Williams on German grid
With a time of 1:32.635 in Q2, Pastor Maldonado led the team in qualifying at the Nürburgring this afternoon. Pastor’s time set on Pirelli’s Option tyre puts his Williams Cosworth FW33 13th on the grid for the German Grand Prix. Rubens Barrichello was also unable to progress beyond Q2 with his fastest time of 1:33.043 putting the Brazilian alongside his teammate in 14th for tomorrow’s race.
Sam Michael, Technical Director:
We have improved on our performance from practice yesterday, but not enough to get into the top 10 in qualifying here today. We did run with quite different specifications between the two cars, with Rubens using the new diffuser and front wing and not running KERS, in order to give us more information going forward. On Rubens’ car we chose not to race with KERS here in order to get some more data for comparison. Now we’ll have a look through all of that data tonight while focusing on the important race decisions.
Pastor Maldonado:
It was a difficult session for us. We were looking more competitive than this yesterday, but not enough to be in Q3. We were working more on race pace so we will see tomorrow. I think we have the possibility to score some points if we have the right strategy.
Rubens Barrichello:
We knew we might struggle on my car as we weren’t able to use KERS here. We didn’t have an ideal balance on the car, particularly compared to the morning, and it wasn’t possible to get on top of that during the session. We need to analyse that in detail, and look for better pace in the race tomorrow.
