Pastor Maldonado praised his Williams team for their hard work after qualifying third for tomorrow’s Euroeapn Grand Prix.
The Venezuelan thinks that strategy will be a particularly important factor on race day, but is targetting another podium finish.
“We’ve been working so hard to understand the car but there is still more performance to find on the soft tyre,” said Maldonado. “The team did a great job today though and Williams is getting stronger and stronger. It's not only a good result for the team, but also for my country and there are so many Venezuelan fans here supporting me which is great to see.
“Strategy will be important tomorrow as it's very hot, but it will make it difficult for everyone. I’m looking forward to pushing for a podium finish tomorrow.”
Team-mate Bruno Senna, on the other hand, was rather disappointed with his qualifying. This was understandable given that he finished the session eleven places behind Maldonado, in fourteenth.
“I'm not too happy with our qualifying result today as I wasn't able to put all my best sectors together which cost me a lot of positions,” said the Brazilian. “However, the car feels good for tomorrow so hopefully we can have a stronger race. It's going to be very tough with the high temperatures but we will be pushing hard to come away with some points.”
Chief Operations Engineer Mark Gillan praised Maldonado for his qualifying performance.
“As we have seen over the whole season, tyre management is paramount to performing well in both qualifying and the race,” explained Gillan. “This has been clearly evident today with a mixed morning and qualifying session. Pastor did an excellent job with a very strong performance on the soft tyres to finish in third. Bruno was less happy with his tyre balance and finished 14th. Based on our longer runs on Friday we look forward to pushing for a good race result.“
