BAHRAIN GRAND PRIX – RACE
The AT&T Williams team collected a point for its efforts
in the Bahrain Grand Prix today with Nico Rosberg finishing
on par with his eighth place grid position. Kazuki Nakajima’s
ambitions were hampered by a start problem and an early spin
which demoted him to the back of the field, from where he
fought back to 14th but an uneventful race with a high rate
of finishers and clean execution of strategies meant there
was little opportunity to gain ground. The team demonstrated
100% reliability through all the practice and qualifying sessions,
but needs to improve its pace to build from its fourth position
in the Championship.
Nico Rosberg:
In the final analysis I guess I should go home happy as we
got a point, but I don’t feel satisfied. We should have
done better. However it was very difficult out there, the
tyre performance was very changeable and the wind conditions
were different to Friday when we set our gear ratios and in
the end the car was just not good enough. So we have got some
work to do before the Spanish GP. Historically Barcelona is
a difficult track for us, but we have got some new developments
for the car, so I hope this will help for the next race.
Kazuki Nakajima:
It was not an easy day for me, I had a very bad start and
then I had a spin on the oil on lap two before the high speed
esses, so it couldn’t have begun any worse. After that
I managed to keep up a consistent pace, but it was difficult
to make any more progress through the field than up to P14
from the back. I will see what lessons we can learn from here
for the next race in Barcelona.
Sam Michael, Technical Director:
It’s good to come away from the weekend with a point,
but clearly we hoped to be fighting for more. On Nico’s
car, we weren’t strong enough in the first stint and
we made it difficult for ourselves with our strategy after
we didn’t qualify well enough. Unfortunately on Kazuki’s
car, the anti-stall kicked in on the start which dropped him
to the back of the field and then he had a spin on the second
lap, otherwise he probably should have made more progress
on his one-stop strategy. Everything was solid today from
a reliability point of view, but we do need to find more performance.
SAKHIR, BAHRAIN
57 LAPS, 308.238 km / 191.530 miles
WEATHER Sunny
Air 28-300C, Track 34-390C
POS DRIVER TEAM Time / Gap (Fastest Lap) Grid
1 F Massa Ferrari 1:31:06.970 (1:33.600, 3rd) 2
2 K Raikkonen Ferrari +3.339s (1:33.709, 4th) 4
3 R Kubica BMW Sauber +4.998s (1:33.775, 5th) 1
8 N ROSBERG FW30-03 H293 AT&T WILLIAMS +55.889 (1:34.072,
6th) 8
14 K NAKAJIMA FW30-04 H294 AT&T WILLIAMS +1 lap (1:35.433,
17th) 16
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