Tough day results in 15th and 22nd places for Williams
Williams endured a difficult qualifying session, where at the end Bruno Senna qualified in 15th position while Pastor Maldonado will start from 22nd. The latter qualified in 17th, but he will be demoted 5 places due to a gearbox change.
• Bruno posted his quickest time in Q2 on a new set of soft tyres.
• Despite making it safely through to Q2, Pastor’s session was brought to an early conclusion by a KERS problem.
Mark Gillan, Chief Operations Engineer:
We have had a relatively tough day today with Pastor experiencing a KERs problem in qualifying which forced us to pit his car and take no further part in the session. This was particularly disappointing as Pastor felt that his car balance was good. Bruno continued to improve throughout qualifying, finishing in P15 in what is a tight grid. We now need to concentrate on tomorrow and hope to use our better race pace to potentially make our way up into the points.
Bruno Senna:
It was really difficult today. Once again, a few tenths of a second make a big difference in grid position. It’s going to be a big challenge tomorrow but I think we can have a good race from where we are. I feel I got as much out of the car as possible today but we can be stronger tomorrow.
Pastor Maldonado:
The car felt car felt quick this morning, so it’s a shame that we had a KERS problem which meant we couldn’t run in Q2. It’s going to be a tough race tomorrow with the added grid penalty, as well as it being a difficult track. We need to attack from the start and get our strategy right, but our pace looked good on race simulations so I’m looking forward to the challenge.
