Abu Dhabi GP Qualifying

Posted on Saturday 31 Oct 2009 and tagged with Abu-Dhabi, Qualifying.

AT&T Williams’ qualifying performance in Abu Dhabi this evening was solid if not to the team’s best measure this season. Nico Rosberg’s p9 grid slot provides the prospect of a points finish tomorrow afternoon, but the team will be looking to find sufficient pace on the Yas Marina circuit to defend its slender championship advantage over its nearest rivals. Kazuki Nakajima finished the day in p14, but has kept close company with his team-mate all weekend, and despite a poorer starting position, will be looking to make a contribution to the championship conclusion tomorrow.

Nico Rosberg:
The session went okay, I think 9th was around the best we could get out of today, we are definitely struggling on the open sections of this circuit, but points are definitely possible here and very important for us this weekend. From the 5th row and with a good strategy tomorrow, we can stay ahead of BMW in the constructors and I can hold 7th position ahead of Trulli in the driver’s championship. It’s a good track, not easy and very hot but this is also the last race for me with Williams and I want to do the best for this great team.

Kazuki Nakajima:
I’m a bit disappointed because I didn’t manage to put everything together in Q2, but there was still a reasonable gap to the first ten, so maybe I wouldn’t have made it into the final qualifying session anyway. The track demands that you are precise all the time and one mistake here is costly, which makes it pretty difficult. I don’t think it will be easy to overtake tomorrow, but because of the nature of sectors 1 and 2, we could have a pretty crazy first lap tomorrow, so I still believe anything is possible.

Rod Nelson, Chief Operations Engineer:
It was a reasonably straightforward qualifying session, although we did expect the option tyre to come into its own in Q2, but this didn’t materialise, so we along with most other teams stayed on the prime tyre. We hoped that Nico had another couple of tenths in him to get among the BMWs just in front, but he starts from the clean side of the grid and he should have a competitive race. Kazuki was also looking competitive on what would have been his fastest lap at the end of the prime run in qualifying two but he ran a little wide in turn 14, got some dirt on his tyres and that unfortunately, was that.