Rain comes too late for Williams

The AT&T Williams team managed to make some modest progress over their qualifying positions in today’s Belgian GP by running a one stop strategy for both Kazuki Nakajima and Nico Rosberg. However, the progress was not sufficient to enable either driver to challenge for points.

A last minute flurry of rain which made the track very slippery for the closing laps presented an opportunity for a late bid for points, but unfortunately the unscheduled stop for wet tyres did not come early enough for the team to capitalise on the weather.

Nico Rosberg: "It wasn’t such an exciting race for me today. Ultimately I did the best I could from where I started and the performance we had in the car and, I think adding all this up, 12th is probably about the best we could have achieved. At the end of the race we had to make the difficult judgement to come in for the wet tyres, and although we didn’t make any gain, I still think it was a good decision to take. Overall then, it wasn’t a good weekend for us and now we need to look forward to Monza and try to improve things. After the recent test there we are confident that it is a track that will suit us better."

Kazuki Nakajima: "Today was a difficult race for me. I had a bit of contact in the first corner which cost me some time, so from then on I just tried to maintain a consistent pace because I was on a one-stop strategy. Given this, I think my race pace was not bad compared with those around me. I made some progress during the race, then just at the end, the rain came and it was a tough call to either to stay on the slicks or try to see what the wets might do for us. In the end we made the stop and changed the tyres, but we didn’t have enough time to make up any ground."

Sam Michael, Technical Director: "It was a fairly uneventful race today as we were simply not competitive enough. We went for a one-stop strategy with both cars, which worked and helped to improve our position, but not enough for us to make progress into the points, which is what matters. The last lap dash on wets was a choice to see if we could make something of the opportunity, it worked for Heidfeld who jumped into a podium position, but there was insufficient track time for us to take advantage."