European GP Race

Posted on Sunday 24 Aug 2008 and tagged with europe, valencia.

The AT&T Williams team secured a championship point today at the European Grand Prix. The city’s Mediterranean backdrop provided blistering conditions for this afternoon’s race which saw Nico Rosberg cross the line in eighth place to collect the team’s first point since Silverstone. Kazuki Nakajima was unable to capitalise upon his highest grid position of the year when his anti-stall device kicked in costing him valuable places at the start. Combined with an incident on the first lap, Kazuki’s race at Valencia’s new street circuit delivered 15th place.

Nico Rosberg:
I’m pretty happy with that. It’s good to be going home with a point today as it’s been a long time since it happened. The race went quite well for me and I was giving it my all, driving what felt like qualifying laps one after the other. The result is also good for the team as it shows we are getting back on track. Once again, I would like to say that Valencia has done a great job here and the race was good fun.

Kazuki Nakajima:
I had a bad start and we have to find the reason for that. On lap one, going into turns four and five, I was just behind Alonso, but there was a bit of a battle going on in front and I couldn’t avoid him going into the corner. After that, I just tried to be consistent. My pace was ok, but I was behind Barrichello and it was really difficult to overtake. Eventually I made it past him and my pace improved, but it was too late.

Patrick Head, Director of Engineering:
With the reliability of the cars these days, one point is what you can expect from starting 9th and 11th on the grid. Kazuki went into anti-stall at the start which lost him a lot of places. He then had to pit for a new front wing which put paid to what would have been a one stop race. Nico squeezed everything he could out of the car today. Unfortunately, we missed out on seventh place with him by a few fractions of a second in his second pit-stop. We now have to return to the factory to find those few tenths.

Race Result

Position	Driver	Team	Time	Fastest Lap	Grid Position
1	F Massa	Ferrari	1:35:32.339	1:38.708	1
2	L Hamilton	McLaren	+5.611	1:38.884	2
3	R Kubica	BMW Sauber	+37.353	1:39.330	3
8	N Rosberg	AT&T Williams	+71.457	1:39.577	9
15	K Nakajima	AT&T Williams	+1 lap	1:39.803	11