“This morning our usual preparations in P3 went well, but what happened in qualifying did not reflect that. The weather disturbed a bit of Q1, but we had a clear forecast and managed those conditions well so that did not affect the result.
“Now we need to go back to work and understand what has happened, because that is really not where we wanted to be here. Of course the weather is uncertain to say the least so anything can happen, and we’ll see how we can best benefit from the conditions tomorrow.”
Sam Michael [Williams – technical director]:
“We had a malfunction in the suspension system of Nico’s car, which prevented him from improving his lap time. We will correct it for tomorrow by changing parts. Kazuki did not have the same problem, but our car is clearly not working well at
Silverstone and his grid position is the result. This does not represent the capability of the Williams team, and we must work to do rectify that.”
Steve Clark [Honda – head of race and test engineering]:
“The car performed as expected this morning in both wet and dry conditions, which was just outside the top ten. Qualifying started with a little fluster as there were showers predicted, so everyone rushed out to get a dry lap in. In the mêlée we found ourselves in the drop-out zone when the shower eventually came.
“We were fortunate that it dried in time for another run, but the improvement was not enough to carry us through to Q2. The drivers did not have the perfect lap or balance, but in reality, had we made Q2, I don’t believe we had the pace to progress further in these conditions.
“Very little can be changed with the car due to parc ferme regulations. In any case, I don’t think that we would alter the cars’ set-up very much as the basic balance is good following the test here. The strategy will be adjusted to suit our grid position, although in a dry race points will be difficult. Rain is still predicted, however, which could make our chances much more interesting.”
Mike Gascoyne [Force India F1 – chief technical officer]:
“An exciting qualifying session, with the threat of rain throughout. As we expected we had clearly made a step forward to the group in front, but unfortunately just not quite enough this time out.
