The AT&T Williams team enjoyed a field-leading advantage for the early part of this evening’s Malaysian Grand Prix, after Nico Rosberg took the race lead from the start and was pulling away from the field until his first stop on lap 15. Soon after threatening lightening and stiffening winds took longer to materialise into fully wet track conditions and precipitated a flurry of pitstops throughout the field as teams tried to anticipate the need for intermediate or full wet tyres in the variable conditions. The stops shuffled the order until the deluge of rain that had been anticipated, finally arrived and the race was red-flagged shortly after on lap 31. Nico was classified in P8 and Kazuki Nakajma in P12, but without the race reaching three quarter distance, only half points were awarded.
Nico Rosberg:
“I took the lead off the start and it is a while since Williams have been out the front on pure performance and I have to thank the engineers for that. The car was going really well and I showed my ability to consistently push on each lap and open the gap to those behind me. And then the rain came and unfortunately the situation just didn’t go our way. But we got something out of the day and our car is right up there, so we will be looking to get the points we deserve next time out.”
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Kazuki Nakajima:
“I had wheelspin of the line and I dropped quite a few positions to the KERS cars around me, and I ended up behind Piquet and I struggled to get past. This affected my plan as I dropped quite a lot of time behind him and then of course the weather came along and it was impossible to make a totally correct decision with the changing conditions. It was the right thing ultimately to red flag the race and it was no surprise that we didn’t restart.”
Sam Michael, Technical Director:
“It was a great start from Nico and he continued a good performance in the dry in the first stint. When the weather came, we made the same tyre choices as the cars around us, including the Brawns and Trulli, but they gained more from their stops than us.”
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