The Chief Technical Officer at Williams, Paddy Lowe, has said that the team’s qualifying was “trouble free”.
Russian driver Sergey Sirotkin out-qualyfied his young Canadian team-mate Lance Stroll at Hockenheim this weekend.
Sirotkin managed to progress into Q2, setting a time of 1:13.702. By the end of the session, he had qualified 12th. Team-mate Stroll finished P19, while both drivers ran the ultrasoft.
Lowe said: “The two runs for each driver were in Q1 were trouble free and it was all very close, but Sergey managed to get through to Q2 with a particularly strong lap.
Both drivers improved on their second set of tyres, but by this stage it was clear it was a one lap tyre as neither of them improved on the second lap.”
The team believed that Stroll might have had the potential to get into Q2. However, he ran into traffic, meaning he was not able to get the tyres to temperature.
“Unfortunately, on Lance’s second run he got caught up in a long queue on the out lap and failed to meet his tyre temperature targets.”
The team are confident Stroll will be able to rectify his poor qualifying result in the race.
“With Lance’s great first lap talent I have no doubt he can also move himself further up the field”.