Rubens Barrichello - Photo Credit: Glenn Dunbar/LAT Photographic
Williams technical director Sam Michael described the twelfth and thirteenth positions that his drivers achieved during qualifying in Singapore today as ‘good’, in that Rubens Barrichello and Pastor Maldonado are well positioned to challenge for points in tomorrow’s race.
“Rubens and Pastor have secured good positions to start the race from and from where we can definitely target a points-scoring result tomorrow,” he said. “Getting everything right on the set-up makes a big difference on a street circuit like this while managing tyre pressures throughout the session was also key. We didn't have any technical issues in qualifying so we can concentrate fully on the race tomorrow.”
Barrichello out-qualified Maldonado for the eighth time this season. The Brazilian sounded reasonably pleased with his qualifying position, but acknowledged how tricky this street circuit can be to drive, and referring to Kamui Kobayashi‘s accident during qualifying today in which he became airborne over the kerbs at Turn 10.
“There are two ways of looking at that result,” said Barrichello. “You can never be happy with 12th, but we pulled a good lap together and we should be satisfied by that.
“This is a great circuit, one I enjoy very much, but it's quite tricky. The kerbs are a problem, as we saw with Kobayashi's incident, so you have to be careful. There was also a lot of traffic out there so I tried going out early to get some clear air. You can extend the capabilities of yourself and your car here so I am pleased with what we've done so far.”
Maldonado had some excuses as to why he qualified behind his team-mate, but sounded generally positive after qualifying today.
“It was hard to get the tyres up to temperature today, especially the options, and that cost me time,” he said. “At the end of Q2, we could have done with some more temperature in the front tyres but it was ok. I did a strong lap to get P13 and I am looking forward to a good race tomorrow and getting into the points.”
