08/06/2008
NEWS STORY
Despite showing strong pace throughout the race weekend again, the AT&T Williams team was unable to convert its potential in the Canadian Grand Prix with both Nico Rosberg and Kazuki Nakajima caught up amid a variety of incidents during the race. Nico Rosberg survived both a nose change after a collision with Lewis Hamilton in the pitlane as well as a puncture to finish the race, albeit outside of the points, but Kazuki Nakajima's accident at two-thirds distance resulted in his retirement. Congratulations to Robert Kubica and BMW Sauber for their first victory.
Nico Rosberg: It was great to begin with and it was going fantastically at the start. I passed Alonso into turn one and I was getting away from him, yet at the same time I wasn't losing too much to Massa in front. But then there was the incident in the pitlane, which really was unfortunate. Later in the race I tried to pass Vettel as it was really necessary to have a go, but I got off the clean line and went wide and Heikki Kovalainen got past me. I am now looking ahead to the next race in France where naturally we will be hoping to achieve a better result.
Kazuki Nakajima: With all the other incidents in the field, it was going well, but then when I was following Jenson, it seemed as if he got on the marbles in the middle of the hairpin and lost traction, and I couldn't avoid him. I damaged my front wing and it was coming off. When I came into the pitlane, it detached itself completely and was stuck under the chassis, so I couldn't make the corner, so that was it for me.
Sam Michael, Technical Director: Obviously it was not a good result for us, although we had good first laps and a good strategy, but Nico then had a crash at the end of the pitlane, that put him back, and then had a puncture and it was difficult to recover from that. Kazuki had a crash later in the race at the hairpin. There were points for the taking as the car has been fast enough to be at the front of the midfield for the 2nd race in a row, but we simply haven't capitalised on it.