Zoom "I need to turn it round and get some good, solid finishes"

It’s been a pretty mixed season for the Williams Toyota team. As the team prepare for the Turkish Grand Prix, Nico Rosberg has finished in the points in four of the first six races, while team-mate Kazuki Nakajima has had a poor run, recording just three finishes with a best result of 12th.

Rosberg had a good run in Monte Carlo to finish sixth and to add another three points to his tally but had hoped for better after qualifying in the same position.

“I had hoped for slightly more than sixth place in Monaco," he stated. "Having found a really good set-up, I felt I had settled into the track well and was comfortable in the car. I was pushing hard in the race and passed Massa and Vettel early on, but our pace wasn’t quick enough to finish any higher than sixth. That’s still a solid result for us though and we’re hoping for more in the next few races.”

Nakajima ran tenth only to crash out on the final lap. He was classified 15th. “After getting into the top ten in qualifying for the first time this year, I was hoping for a decent result in Monaco," the Japanese racer said. "The opening laps went well and I made a clean start, but then it became quite a frustrating race for me with lots of traffic and then getting caught up in other drivers’ one-stop strategies. In the end, I crashed out as I was just pushing a bit too hard. I haven’t had the best run recently, I know that, and I need to turn it round and get some good, solid finishes.”

Heading to Turkey this weekend the team has some updates to the FW31 package. Rosberg is not expecting any great leaps in performance and acknowledges that with the likes of Ferrari moving ahead in performance terms, the Turkish Grand Prix could be a tough race for the team.

"I really hope that maybe we can make a step forward and pick up points," Rosberg said. "It’s so difficult at the moment though. There are teams that have come from behind us and are now in front, like Ferrari, and then teams like Red Bull, Brawn and Toyota are still ahead of us. It’s going to be very challenging for us to score points, but I really hope that we can beat one or two of those cars with the upgrades we’ll have. We need to keep getting a handful of points from each race.”

Earl ALEXANDER
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