23/08/2008
NEWS STORY
Today's qualifying for Sunday's European Grand Prix saw the AT&T Williams team's fortunes improve. A competitive pace in Qs one and two eased Nico Rosberg into the final round of qualifying, from where he achieved ninth on the grid for tomorrow's race. Meanwhile, team mate Kazuki Nakajima marginally missed out on a place in Q3, but recorded a personal best this afternoon having qualified in 11th.
Nico Rosberg: It's been a few races since we managed to get into the top ten, so this is a good result for us. We'd obviously always want to do better, but this shows we've made a step in the right direction and that's satisfying. We had a better understanding of where we had to improve, so we've made those changes which gave us a more competitive car today. We have a good strategy for the race so anything is possible. Today has been positive which gives me hope for points tomorrow.
Kazuki Nakajima: It was a good qualifying for us as both cars are close in the midfield. It was a shame to miss out on Q3, but actually P11 is not a bad place to start the race from because we can select our fuel level. I'll also be on the clean side of the track tomorrow so, all in all, it was a positive qualifying session for us.
Patrick Head, Director of Engineering: It's good to have at least one car in Q3 which we've missed for quite some races. Both drivers did a good job. Unfortunately, Kazuki just missed out on his first Q3 by the smallest of margins. The important thing now is to prepare for the race and make sure we're happy with our strategy. We're looking forward to tomorrow.