06/06/2009
NEWS STORY
Today's qualifying for the Turkish Grand Prix at the purpose-built Istanbul Park circuit saw AT&T Williams' Nico Rosberg keep up his season-long run of Q3 performances, setting the ninth fastest time of the session's deciding round. Team mate Kazuki Nakajima secured the 12th quickest time of the afternoon and will therefore take a place on the sixth row of the grid for tomorrow's race.
Nico Rosberg: It really wasn't easy to choose between the soft and the hard compound to do your fastest lap on today, or to keep a balanced car while changing between the two. I ended up with some understeer and maybe a lost a position because of that, but I'm on the clean side of the grid tomorrow, which will help us to get a good start and maybe gain some positions. Since we also have a good race car, we will be targeting points, which is important for us as a team.
Kazuki Nakajima: It was fairly a difficult qualifying session as the tyre choice was quite hard. We weren't entirely sure whether the prime or the option would be better as there wasn't much in it between the two and this morning's practice didn't really clarify things. In Q1, I struggled with the option so we selected the prime for Q2, but unfortunately that wasn't much of an improvement and I didn't get the performance I wanted. It's going to be difficult to get into the points, but P12 is ok and I will be fighting hard.
Sam Michael, Technical Director: Q1 and Q2 were ok for both drivers, with Nico setting a time just four tenths shy of the fastest time in Q2. When the fuel went in for Nico's Q3 run, we weren't quite as strong as we wanted to be but we'll find out what fuel loads everyone else will be running later this evening. I'm sure both drivers will be in a position to fight for points from their grid slots though. We didn't have any reliability issues and the improvements we've made to the car are working. Again, the competition is fierce as can be seen from how close the times are.