Williams had a day to forget today.
Bruno Senna qualified 15th, and suffered from the other teams being relatively close in their times.
Pastor Maldonado qualified 17th but starts 22nd due to a grid place penalty. He had a KERS problem which meant that they couldn’t attempt to qualifier higher.
Williams would have been hoping for a better qualifying session, but the team are expecting a competitive race pace that should put their cars into the points.
Bruno Senna: “It was really difficult today. Once again, a few tenths of a second make a big difference in grid position. It’s going to be a big challenge tomorrow but I think we can have a good race from where we are. I feel I got as much out of the car as possible today but we can be stronger tomorrow.”
Pastor Maldonado: “The car felt quick this morning, so it’s a shame that we had a KERS problem which meant we couldn’t run in Q2. It’s going to be a tough race tomorrow with the added grid penalty, as well as it being a difficult track. We need to attack from the start and get our strategy right, but our pace looked good on race simulations so I’m looking forward to the challenge.”
Mark Gillan, Chief Operations Engineer: “We have had a relatively tough day today with Pastor experiencing a KERS problem in qualifying which forced us to pit his car and take no further part in the session. This was particularly disappointing as Pastor felt that his car balance was good. Bruno continued to improve throughout qualifying, finishing in P15 in what is a tight grid. We now need to concentrate on tomorrow and hope to use our better race pace to potentially make our way into the points”.
Source: Williams F1 Team
