Rosberg seizes beside the points
The British GP couldn't start worse for the Williams F1 Team as Mark Webber was forced to retire after a collision with Ralf Schumacher. The incident was caused by rookie Scott Speed. Webber's team mate Nico Rosberg seized beside the points as he finished 9th.
Sam Michael, Technical Director, WilliamsF1 “It was disappointing not to get any points out of the race today. Nico finished in p9 by moving through the field. He was battling pretty hard with Villeneuve and was up on him for most of the race, but unfortunately some traffic and a slower stop on Nico’s second refuel lost him the place. On Mark’s car it was unfortunate to get caught up in someone else’s accident at the start which ended his race early. We obviously have some work to do on high speed tracks in terms of pace, but reliability was good and we had no problems. ”
Nico Rosberg “It’s pretty disappointing pushing the whole race and coming away with nothing. I gained several places on the start, moving from twelfth to ninth, but later on in the race I was surprised not to get ahead of Villeneuve. He came out of the pits in front of me after his second pit stop despite me really pushing on my out lap. Anyway, I think from my point of view this was a useful race for me, adding to my experience of Formula One and each weekend gets easier for me. That said, it’s difficult to accept not achieving something because when I had a good race in my earlier career it meant I had either won or was on the podium! Looking ahead, I am confident it’s going to be better for us in Montreal and Indy which are different tracks to here and hopefully better suited to us.”
Mark Webber “I had a pretty good start and made up a few places off the line. It looked like Scott Speed clipped Ralf on the right rear going into Becketts which caused the Toyota to spin and end up in my path. Ralf was obviously trying to save his car, which is fair enough, but he came directly back across the track when I was on the inside trying to get a clean run out, so I had nowhere to go. We’ve had a tough weekend so it’s a shame we couldn’t get something out of it. We have a lot of work to do now and we have to keep pressing on and get ready for Montreal.”
Simon Corbyn, Head of F1 Race Engineering, Cosworth: “Cosworth worked with WilliamsF1 to extract everything we had from Nico’s engine but unfortunately it wasn’t quite enough to pick up a point. Mark’s race was obviously all over following the first lap incident. Cosworth had no issues with either of the Series 4 race engines throughout their second race weekend.”
