United States GP: Qualifying notes - Williams

17/11/2012

Pastor Maldonado qualified tenth and Bruno Senna 11th for tomorrow's United States Grand Prix. After comfortably getting through into Q3, Pastor struggled to get the tyres into their optimal window on his final run on the medium compound. Bruno made a mistake in the final moments of Q2, running wide at Turn 19 resulting in him narrowly missing out on a place in Q3. With the good race pace seen yesterday, the team are feeling confident of moving both cars further into the points tomorrow.

Pastor Maldonado: The performance wasn't there yesterday so today was much better for us. Unfortunately in Q3 the grip wasn't there, as it was difficult to get the tyres working correctly. It's important we are in the top ten for tomorrow though. We have a good car so we are looking to get more points tomorrow in what looks set to be a good race. All around the track are Venezuelan flags and there is a lot of support here for me as it's so close to my home, so hopefully that will help give me an extra boost tomorrow!

Bruno Senna: Unfortunately I made a small mistake on my best lap in Q2, running a bit wide on Turn 19 and then having dirty tyres which cost me about half a second and a place in Q3 for sure. It's frustrating but we are able to score good points from where we are. We have a good car and we looked competitive in our race simulation in practice yesterday, so I'm really looking forward to the race. It's a track we are all attacking and it's important to keep pushing.

Mark Gillan, Chief Operations Engineer: Both cars responded well to the overnight set-up changes with the general balance in FP3 being pretty good this morning. Qualifying was somewhat unusual, with most cars doing longer runs in an attempt to get the tyres into their optimal window. Both Bruno and Pastor easily made it through Q1 and Bruno was unlucky not to progress, along with Pastor, into the final Q3 session. Pastor felt that the balance was not as good in Q3 as he had felt it in earlier sessions and struggled to put a clean lap together finishing in tenth. We are looking forward to tomorrow and will push hard to get both drivers home in the points.

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