Bahrain GP: Qualifying notes - Williams

21/04/2012

Bruno will start 15th and Pastor 22nd for tomorrow's Bahrain Grand Prix. Bruno posted his quickest time in Q2 on a new set of soft tyres. Despite making it safely through to Q2, Pastor's session was brought to an early conclusion by a KERS problem.

Due to a gearbox issue on Friday night, it was necessary for the team to change Pastor's race gearbox, incurring a five-place grid penalty. Therefore despite being classified 17th in Q2, Pastor will start 22nd.

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 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 up into the points.

Check out our Qualifying gallery, here.