Mixed fortunes for Williams in qualifying

F1 Grand Prix, GP Spain, Circuit de Catalunya

The AT&T Williams team endured an unsatisfactory qualifying session this afternoon at the Circuit de Catalunya for tomorrow’s Spanish Grand Prix. For his debut race at the Spanish track, Kazuki Nakajima secured his best qualifying position of the season and will line up in 12th on the grid, having narrowly missed out on a place in the final round.

Meanwhile, team-mate Nico Rosberg will start the race from P15 having suffered with a balance problem on his FW30. The team will now concentrate on optimising strategy for tomorrow’s race to promote both cars into point-scoring positions.

It was a little bit difficult out there for the team today. Personally, though, my result in today’s qualifying was the best I’ve had so far this year so I’m fairly happy with that. I only just missed the top ten as well, which was a shame. We still have the race tomorrow, and you never know what can happen. We will see what we can do with our strategy and I will just try my hardest to get the most out of it.

It wasn’t a good day for us today. I’ve struggled with the balance of my car since we arrived, but the only things that we could adjust to try and improve it during qualifying were the front wing and the tyre pressures, but that wasn’t enough so I wasn’t able to do better this afternoon. It will be very difficult starting the race from 15th, but it does allow us to decide our fuel level. I’m hoping I’ll get a good start and gain some positions from the outset, and then we shall see where we can go from there.

That was obviously not as good as what we had expected considering our efforts in practice yesterday. From just outside the top ten, however, we can fight our way into the points with a strong strategy and that’s what we’ll be aiming to do tomorrow.