Belgian GP: Williams Saturday qualifying notes
Nico Rosberg qualified his Williams-Toyota in sixth and will start tomorrow's Belgian Grand Prix from fifth place* following a strong performance and an intelligent use of tactics in a very competitive qualifying session at the Spa-Francorchamps ...
Nico Rosberg qualified his Williams-Toyota in sixth and will start tomorrow's Belgian Grand Prix from fifth place* following a strong performance and an intelligent use of tactics in a very competitive qualifying session at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit today.
His qualifying performance was a step improvement after a difficult day of preparation in practice yesterday, with the team improving set-up and Nico executing an effective strategy to qualify strongly. Team-mate Alex Wurz will start from P16 with the benefit of a free fuel strategy having not progressed into Q3.
Nico Rosberg:
"Today's qualifying was super, it really went well and I am very happy. I am a bit surprised as well, to be honest, because I didn't think we'd be so far up as it was very tight to make it into the top ten in Q2. We struggled here a bit more yesterday than we did on other tracks but overnight the team did a good job and found all the right solutions. Fifth position on the grid is really fantastic. This puts us in a strong position to be able to score some good points tomorrow."
Alex Wurz:
"Some of my problem today was with not enough top speed on the straights. Of course this is quite punishing at a track like Spa. The engineers will have a look at it. Otherwise we have done a very good job and made real progress from yesterday with the set-up and the car felt good under cornering. We should have a good car for tomorrow even if the start position is not great."
Sam Michael, Technical Director:
"Great job by Nico today. He made some good judgements in qualifying to put his car in the right place in terms of towing and saving his softer tyres on out laps. We are looking forward to seeing him and Alex race strongly tomorrow. The engineers worked hard all night to improve the car from yesterday and it was nice to see such a decent step. We'll also check everything on Alex's car before the race to see why there is such a big difference to his team mate. We didn't have any reliability issues today."
*5th placed Robert Kubica will be penalised 10 grid places for an unscheduled engine change
Nico Rosberg: 6th*
Chassis/engine: FW29-05 H186
Time: 1:47.334
Alex Wurz: 16th
Chassis/engine: FW29-03 H177
Time: 1:47.394
-credit: williams
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