23/04/2006
NEWS STORY
Sam Michael, Technical Director, WilliamsF1: "It was a good result to get both cars to the finish and improve significantly on our starting positions today. Mark overtook Kimi on the first lap then drove well to sixth place and the strategy he was on worked well. Nico had a a really good start but lost out on the first few corners, but nevertheless improved on his start position of 13th to finish 11th. Bridgestone's new tyre worked well. Overall a satisfactory day, but we are pushing for more."
Mark Webber: "Today's result is positive after a difficult start to the weekend and all in all, we had a great race with the boys doing a good job on the strategy and our stops worked well. The only tricky part of the race was the first few laps on high fuel which made the car hard work on turn in and under braking, especially because of the bumps. Apart from a reasonable finish today, we also learnt plenty about Bridgestone. The job now is to keep finding more pace."
Nico Rosberg: "This weekend was pretty up and down for me because qualifying wasn't too bad but I have definitely had better races than today. I didn't feel 100% comfortable in the car, especially on used tyres. My main problem was racing in traffic all afternoon and even when I should have pushed hard to gain some ground, there was someone ahead, preventing me from making progress. No points isn't such a good outcome, but now I am looking forward to doing a better job at my home race at the Nurburgring as Mark has shown today that we can compete in strong point-scoring positions."
Simon Corbyn, Head of F1 Race Engineering, Cosworth Ltd: "Great to get a Cosworth powered car back in the points again at Imola and my thanks to everyone at Cosworth for the huge effort put into the CA2006 programme. Once again Cosworth worked very well with WilliamsF1 and this time we came away with something to show for it. We'll need to have a good look through the data and inspect both engines prior to their second event."