Rosberg and Nakajima disappointed

AT&T Williams’ qualifying effort for the Turkish Grand Prix concluded with neither driver able to make it into the top ten shoot out today. As a result, Nico Rosberg will line up on the grid in 11th place for tomorrow’s race, while team mate, Kazuki Nakajima, will take to the eighth row and 16th position. Both will have the advantage of now selecting an optimum strategy.

Nico Rosberg: "It didn’t go the way we expected it to today. I thought we could get into the top ten but it wasn’t possible as there were a couple of things on the car I was not completely happy with. However, 11th is a good starting position and we are normally good off the line, which gives me confidence going into the first corner. On top of that, I can now choose what strategy I want to run, which gives us the opportunity to pull it back in the race and do well."

Kazuki Nakajima: "It was a tough qualifying session for me, and a shame to miss Q2 by just one position. The balance on the car was ok, but we couldn’t quite pull everything together this afternoon. I also struggled getting enough grip out there. We’ll now work hard to try to find some improvements before tomorrow’s race."

Sam Michael, Technical Director: "That wasn’t really what we expected from qualifying today. We thought Nico would get into Q3 based on all of the practice running and fuel loads that we did yesterday, but we struggled getting the balance right on his car in the middle sector. From a strategy perspective, however, 11th isn’t a bad place to start the race from. Kazuki missed out on a place in Q2 by just a tenth. We expected him to be slightly behind as we didn’t have some recent aero updates available for him. For the race, we’ll be looking for both drivers to have good starts and push to get into the points with a good strategy."