British GP: Williams Saturday qualifying notes

Qualifying for Sunday's British Grand Prix concluded unsatisfactorily for the AT&T Williams team today. Alex Wurz ended his afternoon at the close of Q2 in 13th place, missing out on a slot in the top ten shoot out by just under two tenths of a second.

For the first time this season, Nico Rosberg was knocked out in Q1 and will start tomorrow's race from P17 following a significant loss of power on his FW29, the cause of which is currently under investigation.

Alex Wurz:

"I think I squeezed quite a bit out of my car today. My fastest lap wasn't too bad, although I think I could have gained another half a tenth in the last sector. I cannot be happy with 13th because you need to be a bit further up the grid to make it easier to score points. It's going to be a hard race as everyone is so close at the moment."

"Strategy here is going to be similar to what it was in Magny-Cours, which means that most teams are going to be doing pretty much the same thing. I need to have an aggressive start tomorrow and will give everything I can. I am a fighter."

Nico Rosberg:

"I had a technical problem on the car which lost me a lot of straight line speed, up to 20km/h, so the session was disappointing. It was going well this morning, the car was really comfortable and I was looking forward to a good qualifying session."

"From 17th on the grid, it's going to be tough, but we'll try anyway. I have been really on it this weekend and we were expecting to do better today. Let's hope we can get something more out of tomorrow at the team's home race."

Sam Michael, Technical Director:

"After a decent performance in all the practice sessions, that was obviously a pretty disappointing qualifying. It was good for Alex that he made it into Q2 and 13th. Nico's car misfired in Q1, so we are now checking all the wiring looms and electrical boxes to identify and then fix the problem. Looking ahead to the race tomorrow, we will work out a good strategy tonight to allow the drivers to fight from their starting positions."

Alex Wurz: 13th
Chassis/engine: FW29-03 H149
Time: 1:20.350

Nico Rosberg: 17th
Chassis/engine: FW29-05 H148
Time: 1:21.219

-credit: williams