12/09/2009
NEWS STORY
Despite an intensive work programme to improve aerodynamic performance in low drag configuration over the past fortnight, the AT&T Williams team was unable to find sufficient performance gain to avert an uncompetitive qualifying performance for the Italian Grand Prix today. With aero performance key, and six cars benefitting from tactically important KERS systems on the high speed Monza circuit, maintaining the team's unbroken run of eight points scores will be a significant challenge but one that will be tackled with resolve in tomorrow's race.
Kazuki Nakajima: It was a tough qualifying session for us – we knew it would be, but that doesn't change the disappointment. The gap to making it into Q2 was very small and perhaps without hitting traffic on my last lap, something more might have been possible to give me a better start position for the race.
Nico Rosberg: I started to find a bit more competitiveness during qualifying today and we made all the right decisions such as choosing the soft tyre, but I didn't manage to put the ideal lap together as the car has not been at its best all weekend. Although we had a tough time with the car last race and we will struggle a lot here this weekend, I am convinced things will improve for Singapore and we will be back where we were in Valencia.
Patrick Head, Director of Engineering: Obviously today's performance is disappointing, but this was as much as our car can do here. Clearly we haven't done a very good job with our low drag package for the car and we are suffering the consequences of that. Meanwhile, we are confident we can return to competitiveness for the next four races but here it is going to be very difficult to continue our run of points-scoring races. Nevertheless we will be doing our best.