French GP: Williams Saturday qualifying notes

Qualifying for the French Grand Prix delivered another split result for the team as Nico Rosberg enjoyed a competitive afternoon while team mate, Alex Wurz, was left frustrated. A confident performance enabled Nico to cruise into Q3 and secure 9th position on the starting grid for tomorrow's race, despite an electronics problem. Meanwhile, another hotly contested session meant Alex narrowly missed out on round two by the smallest of margins and will start from P18.

Nico Rosberg: 9th

"It is difficult here to get the lap right in qualifying because grip is limited. I managed to do a very good lap in Q2, one of those laps you get once in a while, but I was a bit disappointed by Q3 because something happened with the gearbox in the second to last corner and I lost a few tenths. If that hadn't happened, I think we would have been a couple of positions higher than I am. Expectations for tomorrow are, of course, for points and we are in a good position to score."

Alex Wurz: 18th

"If you ignore the fact that I went out in the first round and I'm in 18th place, I'm actually much closer to my team mate here than I've been at other races and was only a tenth away from making it into Q2. I had a clean run and made no mistakes. I had a bit of a balance issue in the last sector, but other guys were suffering with that as well. I'm disappointed, of course, but I have to keep a cool head going forward into the race."

Sam Michael, Technical Director:

"Disappointing session for Alex not to get through from Q1. It looked like he had the speed but he didn't manage to hook up the sectors. Nico was going well and should have been good for a higher grid position. Unfortunately, he had a problem with the electronics on his timed lap going into turn 15 and lost a lot of time. We'll look into that now and find out what the problem was."

Nico Rosberg
Chassis/engine: FW29-05 H148
9th, 1:16.328

Alex Wurz
Chassis/engine: FW29-04 H135
18th, 1:16.241

-credit: williams