Hungarian GP Qualifying

Posted on Saturday 02 Aug 2008 and tagged with hungary.

Qualifying for round 11 of the Championship, the Hungarian Grand Prix, ended badly for the AT&T Williams team in Budapest today. Nico Rosberg eased into Q2, but was unable to convert a promising pace when his car showed up a hydraulic problem leaving him confined to the garage for the duration of the run and in P15 for tomorrow’s race. Kazuki Nakajima was knocked out of Q1 having struggled with balance and heavy traffic on his final run and will start the race from 17th on the grid for his first outing at the Hungarian track.

Nico Rosberg:
We had a difficult start to this weekend, but we’ve improved throughout the sessions and learnt a lot of things along the way. We therefore weren’t looking too bad for qualifying. I made a mistake on my fast lap in Q1 and lost two and a half tenths in one corner, so my Q1 time did not show the true potential of our car. We then had a good chance of making it into Q3, but a hydraulic problem meant I couldn’t go out at all in Q2 which was disappointing. It’s pretty interesting here tyre-wise as both are very soft on this track, but the harder ones were better for me today.

Kazuki Nakajima:
It was a difficult qualifying for me. Aside from plenty of traffic, I didn’t really manage to find the right balance on my last set of option tyres. Both factors compromised my run. We now need to go through the data and work out what’s happening in order to get the most out of the car for tomorrow.

Sam Michael, Technical Director:
It was always going to be a tight qualifying session for us. Unfortunately, Kazuki didn’t progress through from the first session. Nico obviously could have delivered more, but a hydraulic problem kept him in the garage for the whole of Q2. There was no sign of it during the last run in Q1, but it became apparent when we fired up for the second session. We’re investigating the cause now and will resolve the problem in time for the race.