Williams cars far apart in qualifying
The Williams team believes that tyre management proved again crucial during today's qualifying session. While Pastor Maldonado qualified 3rd with a great lap in Q3, Bruno Senna was less happy with the balance of his tyres and will start the race from P14.
- Pastor Maldonado will start third on the grid for tomorrow's European Grand Prix with a time of 1:38.475 around the Valencia Street Circuit.
- Bruno Senna qualified 14th, just missing out on Q3 after a closely fought Q2 ended with the top ten covered by just 0.214 seconds.
- After showing the competitiveness of the FW34 in qualifying, the team are looking for another strong points finish for both cars in tomorrow’s race.
Mark Gillan, Chief Operations Engineer:
"As we have seen over the whole season, tyre management is paramount to performing well in both qualifying and the race. This has been clearly evident today with a mixed morning and qualifying session. Pastor did an excellent job with a very strong performance on the soft tyres to finish in third. Bruno was less happy with his tyre balance and finished 14th. Based on our longer runs on Friday we look forward to pushing for a good race result."
Pastor Maldonado, P3:
"We've been working so hard to understand the car but there is still more performance to find on the soft tyre. The team did a great job today though and Williams is getting stronger and stronger. It’s not only a good result for the team, but also for my country and there are so many Venezuelan fans here supporting me which is great to see. Strategy will be important tomorrow as it’s very hot, but it will make it difficult for everyone. I'm looking forward to pushing for a podium finish tomorrow."
Bruno Senna, P14:
"I’m not too happy with our qualifying result today as I wasn’t able to put all my best sectors together which cost me a lot of positions. However, the car feels good for tomorrow so hopefully we can have a stronger race. It’s going to be very tough with the high temperatures but we will be pushing hard to come away with some points."
