03/10/2009
NEWS STORY
Following only a minimal amount of dry running during Friday's practice sessions, qualifying for tomorrow's Japanese Grand Prix proved challenging for AT&T Williams today. Nico Rosberg made it into Q2 but his subsequent runs to achieve a place in the top ten were unsuccessful, while the session was also severely disrupted by two red flag incidents. Nico was ultimately forced out of Q2 in P11. Kazuki Nakajima's debut qualifying at Suzuka in front of his home crowd ended in disappointment as he was eliminated out of Q1 with the 17th time.
Nico Rosberg: It was a dramatic qualifying session with numerous accidents and so many people going off which just show that this is a really unforgiving track. I'm not overly happy with my performance today but I didn't feel particularly comfortable in the car. The first part of qualifying was ok, but I never found the same level of grip after that. Of course, I would have wanted to do better than 11th place, but it at least gives us the opportunity to choose our strategy tomorrow.
Kazuki Nakajima: We didn't really get the grip in the dry conditions or get the most out of the car today. I'm really disappointed. Yesterday was a pretty good day in the wet, but it just didn't go right in the dry. It's very nice to be at home in front of so many fans, I just hope to be able to do better for them tomorrow.
Sam Michael, Technical Director: That was a strange session with so many red flags. Kazuki just missed out on Q2 by a narrow margin, then Nico just missed out on Q3 after two false starts that ended up in red flags with no lap time on the board. With the remaining time we had, we decided to go out earlier than usual on another set of primes but it didn't put us through. Both drivers have the choice of fuel strategy now so we'll put all our efforts into that to get the best possible result that we can.