German GP Race

Posted on Sunday 20 Jul 2008 and tagged with Germany.

The AT&T Williams team had an unrewarding German Grand Prix at Hockenheim today, despite making modest improvements by the end of the race over its grid positions, but ultimately making insufficient progress to claim any points. Both drivers dropped time behind slower cars early on, but made some advances after a mid-race safety car period brought the field together. Nico rounded off the top ten and Kazuki finished the 67 laps in P15.

Nico Rosberg:
Even though it’s not great to go home without any points, it was a good race. It was a bit difficult at the beginning as I had a technical problem at the start which cost me a place. From then on I was pretty comfortable, and I was able to push hard when I had free track – the car felt good, but then with the safety car the order was mixed up quite a bit. Regardless, it was great to race here in front of the German fans, and the atmosphere was amazing. We now have a few races ahead of us where I am sure we can do well and our performance will improve.

Kazuki Nakajima:
It was a difficult race for us today with something happening in every stint. First of all I lost a bit of time early on and I was stuck in the traffic for a long time. It would have also helped if the safety car had stayed out a bit longer so I could have made my stop. Then finally, in the last stint, I picked up some debris under the car which was causing bad understeer and I lost a place. Eventually, whatever it was under the car came free and the balance returned but by then it was too late.

Sam Michael, Technical Director:
It was an unrewarding race in terms of the results. With such a tight grid, it is very difficult to make progress once you are back in the pack regardless of strategy and obviously the safety car in the middle of race didn’t really help matters, but that’s just the way it is. We will now head back to the factory and prepare for the next race in Budapest.

Race Result

Position	Driver	Team	Time	Fastest Lap	Grid Position
1	L Hamilton	McLaren	1:31:20.874	1:16.039, 2nd	1
2	N Piquet	Renault	+5.586	1:16.910, 9th	17
3	F Massa	McLaren	+9.339	1:16.502, 5th	2
10	N Rosberg	AT&T Williams	+37.658	1:17.380, 15th	13
15	K Nakajima	AT&T Williams	+60.003	1:17.691, 17th	16