Rubens Barrichello was happy with his qualifying performance, after suffering a nightmare start to the day.
Williams had been forced to change the engine of the Brazilian driver’s FW32 after third practice and his mechanics faced a race against the clock to be ready for qualifying.
Thankfully Barrichello would not miss out on qualifying and managed to set the eleventh fastest time – the top-ten shootout eluding him by a matter of tenths of a second.
Team-mate Nico Hulkenberg was sixteenth, after making a mistake on his final quick lap.
Rubens Barrichello – 11th: Qualifying went ok for us; it was just a shame that we were pipped in the last minute of Q2. Everything is so close at the moment though and, if you think about it, that was our best qualifying for getting closer to the top. It was a great lap and I’m happy with what I did out there this afternoon.
Nico Hulkenberg – 16th: We had a hard time in the practice sessions and P16 is obviously not what I was hoping for. My last lap wasn’t perfect because I made a mistake in the last corner which cost me time. I think it will probably be wet for the race tomorrow and I’m looking forward to it.
Sam Michael, Technical Director: Rubens did well in qualifying and unfortunately just missed out on a slot in the top ten. We had to fit a new engine on his car after this morning’s practice so it was a good effort by the mechanics to get him out in time for qualifying. Nico’s qualifying wasn’t as good as he would have hoped for and he’ll be analysing that tonight with his engineers. We tested a stalling rear wing on Rubens’ car during the morning practice session, from which we collected some useful data, but it’s early R&D at this stage so we have taken the decision not to race it this weekend.

