Rubens Barrichello - Photo Credit: Charles Coates/LAT Photographic
Rubens Barrichello thanked his Williams team for making a huge number of changes on his car before qualifying in Japan today, allowing him to take thirteenth place on the Suzuka grid.
Team-mate Pastor Maldonado will start alongside the Brazilian on row 7 after he qualified in fourteenth.
“First of all I want to thank the team for working so hard on making the changes I wanted,” said Barrichello. “The car wasn't behaving well in practice this morning so we changed almost everything on it before qualifying. Everyone did a great job turning it around in time. The changes really transformed the car and we pulled off a strong lap this afternoon.”
Maldonado was not quite so happy with his car in qualifying but was less than two tenths of a second off the pace of Barrichello. “Quite a difficult qualifying for me, primarily because we lost a lot of track time during yesterday's practice,” said the Venezuelan. “We made a few changes after this morning's session and we managed to get a good lap out of the car in qualifying. I don't have the balance I'd like, but we have time go through everything and do some more work ahead of the race.”
