Fantastic race for Williams, but no points

The AT&T Williams team performed strongly in today’s Malaysian Grand Prix until a technical failure intervened terminating Nico Rosberg’s race 13 laps from the end of the race. Alex Wurz, starting from the back of the grid, fought through the field from 19th place to finish inside the top ten, in ninth place at the flag.

Alex Wurz "It was a good race and I had fun, especially in the first stint, when I had a good pace on soft tyres and could overtake. I am also happy from the physical point of view, because I feel ok, even after such tough afternoon. Starting from 19th made it difficult to fight against Trulli and Kovalainen by the end of the race and it was disappointing to finish just out of the points. I now look forward to Bahrain, as our car is now much better in qualifying and I hope that I can extract there the same race pace I had here to in order be able to bring some points to the people at home who are working very hard."

Nico Rosberg "We managed to improve our qualifying performance from Australia so I had a good starting position but I lost 6th place to Kubica at the start. Later he made a mistake or had a problem and I thought, I’m right next to him and I managed to claw the place back. I had a good run through the next couple of corners to hold the position and that opened up my race really well. From there I gave it everything I had, but it all came to a halt. It was a great shame not to finish but things are progressing and we hope we can do better in a week’s time."

Sam Michael, Technical Director "It was obviously disappointing to stop with Nico while he was in sixth place. We’re not clear what the problem is at the moment and need to get the car back to look at it. Alex had a good race from where he came from, unfortunately he just missed out on points. Overall, our race pace was good."