Despite encouraging practice pace, the AT&T Williams team
were unable to convert early promise
into points at this weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix and return
home from a six week trip to the Far East
with just 3.5 points on the board.
Practice saw the team carry out the usual programme of
mechanical and aero set-up work on Friday,
all the more important for Nico Rosberg in Bahrain as he was
using an upgraded aero package on his
FW31 for this race. With temperatures hovering around the mid-to
late thirties for the duration of the
weekend, work was focused on determining the operating
parameters and degradation rates of the
prime and option tyres, as well as the thermal parameters of the
car in such extreme heat. As such,
the team ran three different cooling levels on Friday to
determine the optimum balance between
keeping engine, gearbox and electrical box temperatures
controlled for reliability while maintaining
aero performance. The tyre compares undertaken showed that,
although the degradation levels
weren’t significantly disparate between the two tyre
compounds, the softer tyre ran seven tenths
quicker over the lap so would be the preferred choice of the
team for qualifying and the race.
Saturday’s qualifying session proved as competitive as ever
among the teams. For AT&T Williams,
both Nico and Kazuki made it into Q2 but the team’s end result
of P9 for Nico (leaving his ’09 season
run of Q3 entries unbroken) and P12 for Kazuki was not
unexpected. Nico struggled to optimise the
grip levels of his tyres and was left unsettled with an under steering
car, while Kazuki didn’t have the
benefit of the new aero components to assist his pace to make it
into Q3.
Both drivers made good starts for Sunday’s race, but Nico’s
was overshadowed by the KERS equipped
Ferraris whom he lost position to going into the first corner
and Kazuki sustained an incident
on lap two which required him to stop for a new nose leaving him
at the back of the field from where
he never recovered. With just eight laps to go, the pitwall were
then forced to retire Kazuki having
noticed spikes in his oil pressure. Meanwhile, Nico’s two stop
strategy involving a long first stint was
compromised by traffic at just the critical moments in his race
plan leaving him to finish the race just
two tenths off a points-paying position in ninth place.
