Bahrain GP: Williams qualifying report

Having enjoyed relative competitiveness at the Sakhir circuit in the past, the AT&T Williams team was able to make a positive step forwards from its qualifying performance at the last race in Malaysia, although the team was only able to get one car through to Q3, leaving further room for improvement. Nico will start tomorrow's race from the fourth row of the grid, with Kazuki starting in sixteenth position, with much intrigue surrounding the relative pace, fuel strategy and tyre plans across the field.

Nico Rosberg:

I am happy because we are back where we expected to be at the moment, which is behind the top three teams, so 8th position is more or less the best we can do. It would have been nice to be ahead of Jarno Trulli, but he was a little bit quicker than me overall. We have a good race car, possibly stronger than our qualifying car, so I think we are in a good position for the race and strategy is also on target. It's definitely all going in the right direction.

Kazuki Nakajima:

It was not a great qualifying session for me today. I made it into Q2 which was okay, but I wasn't able to get the most out of the car or the tyres, which cost me quite a lot. Here at least it is a circuit where overtaking is possible, which will be important tomorrow considering from where I am starting the race.

Sam Michael, Technical Director:

We had a better qualifying session than in Malaysia, but it was still a bit disappointing after the pace we showed in practice, but tomorrow will be an interesting race, especially with everyone managing tyre degradation. Nico is in a good position from where he can score points. Kazuki didn't qualify so well which makes his race difficult tomorrow, but he has shown that he can fight strongly and we expect to see that in the race. We'll look at any fine tuning we can do for the race overnight.

-credit: williams