German GP Qualifying

Posted on Saturday 11 Jul 2009 and tagged with germany, qualifying.

Prior to today’s qualifying session for the German GP, Nico Rosberg was one of only four drivers with a 100% record of progression into final qualifying this season, a record that unfortunately lapsed today. In a rain-affected second session, the stop-start wet conditions made tyre selection difficult and the team was not able to show the genuine abilities of the FW31, with both Kazuki and Nico on the wrong tyre at the critical moments in the session. Over the race distance tomorrow, the inherent car pace should enable both drivers to progress from their starting positions. Congratulations to Mark Webber for his first pole position.

Kazuki Nakajima:
It was a difficult qualifying session today, run in tricky conditions. To get it right, you needed to have perfect timing and make the right decision with the tyres. Today we just missed that a bit and that was it. The overall order in the top 10 is a bit different, so maybe this provides some possibilities for the race. Now we will just have try to use strategy to our best advantage and see what we can achieve.

Nico Rosberg:
As long as it was dry it all went well. Qualifying one was comfortable and we were making good progress. If it had stayed dry, I think we would have been right up there. However, in the changing conditions in the second session we just didn’t get the best out of it and we will have to analyse why that was. The circumstances with the changing levels of rain made it massively difficult, but it looks like it may be the same tomorrow and I hope that the luck will run our way if the conditions are as variable.

Sam Michael, Technical Director:
It was a disappointing outcome to qualifying after a competitive morning practice and Qualifying One. We just didn't get onto the right tyre at the right time because the conditions continued to change. There is some luck involved, but that's no excuse as everyone has to cope with the same conditions and others got more out of it. We'll put our focus now on the best strategy to score points tomorrow as the car is definitely capable of that here at the Nurburgring.