Wrong tyres for Williams

Another disappointing day for the Williams F1 Team at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve at Montreal. Nico Rosberg had to retire after a collision in the first lap with Juan Pablo Montoya. Team mate Mark Webber had the wrong tyres and finished only 12th.

Sam Michael, Technical Director, WilliamsF1 “It was obviously a disappointing race and the tyre Williams chose here was not suitable and we suffered large degradation. Because of this it proved to be a difficult race for Mark, while Nico had a coming together with another car at the start of the race, which he will have to look at. Looking forward to next weekend, there is no reason why we can’t return competitively for Indianapolis with a better tyre.”

Mark Webber “For this event we picked the wrong tyres and we didn’t have any grip at all due to the high levels of degradation the tyres suffered. I got a little bit of grip back towards the end of the stints but when all four tyres were completely grained, it was unfortunately impossible to drive the car. On the positive side, we got to the end of the race which is good from a reliability perspective and the team did a good job in the pitstops, but we were too far off the pace today.”

Nico Rosberg “I claimed one place off the start and I thought that the car felt really good and we could possibly be in with a chance of some points today. I was aware Montoya was close behind me, but I knew I could defend my position as the car was really good on the brakes. I choose an outside line and left enough room for him to come inside me into the chicane, as I knew if he did pass me, I would get ahead again coming out of the corner. However, he came in really tight and we were never going to make it round the corner together. I felt him hit me from the rear once, then again, and that was it, my race was over.”

Sean O’Mahony, Principal Engineer – F1 Race Engineering, Cosworth Ltd: “We didn’t encounter any engine issues with Mark today. We will need to inspect the engine from Nico’s car carefully to assess if there was any damage from the crash. We hope that both engines will stay in for Indianapolis next week which brings a fresh challenge as it has the longest straight of the year.”