Williams relies on stronger race pace to recover
The Williams F1 Team already had its worries about qualifying yesterday, and these proved right. Pastor Maldonado made a crucial error on his final flying lap and will start from 17th on the grid while Bruno Senna qualified in 16th despite looking stronger in the early Q1 part of the session.
Mark Gillan, Chief Operations Engineer:
"Following a reasonably competitive morning session we struggled to find the pace in qualifying which we now need to analyse and understand with Bruno finishing in 16th and Pastor qualifying in 17th, following a spin on his last flying lap. We have a lot to do tomorrow to get into the points but our high fuel, long run pace is good."
Bruno Senna, P16:
"It was looking promising in Q1 and I managed to put a few good laps together, but the track evolution caught us out a little bit and there just wasn’t the grip in Q2. It is frustrating to be back in 16th position but we have learnt a lot today and I’m sure we will be stronger tomorrow in the race because the car has been looking strong during long runs all week."
Pastor Maldonado, P17:
"On my final lap I just took too much kerb and ended up hitting the wall, which is disappointing because I was on a good lap that should have put me into Q3. The car has been looking better this week than this qualifying session suggests and we have good race pace so we will have a good chance of making up positions tomorrow."
