AT&T Williams F1 Team fan sector: results after round 13 in Belgium

[Kotenok]

Some time passed since last update about the race results of the AT&T Williams F1 Team!... Since round 10 the team isn't performing well, and the bad results doesn't help to write something with good mood :-P So I'm asking sorry for those who follow these posts and I ask again patience for these posts, they sometimes are late but always provide a good review about the happened in the races.

So, what's happened lately guys? A race in Belgium :-) A stunning place for a race, a continuous flow of turns up and down. The circuit's layout suffered many changes during his long history, a total of 39 F1 races took part in there and the place is known with a singular name: the circuit of the Ardennes mountains. It contains pretty famous curves as Eau Rouge, La Source, Les Combes or the moddifed "Bus Stop". The circuit is well known for its frequently climatic changes.

And it has been due the rains that the race has been again exciting and unique. The polemic of the decisions of the stewards provoked again the rage of the fanatics. In the last steps of the race, the clouds which were threatening during all the afternoon finally left the drops down, and as usually the rain evolved fast until catch the whole engineer teams and drivers on the last laps with slicks (well, stripped tires of course). A hard battle between Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen, began when the McLaren closed the gap and came close on the Bus Stop chicane, which Lewis had to pass through. Then, the rule says that any driver can't use the outside parts of the track for winning some advantage, so Lewis left Kimi overtake him in the short start straight, but Lewis with a clever move managed to pass Kimi at the end of the straight. The battle ended just when Kimi couldn't drive the Ferrari by the track, spun and ended on the inside wall from the Blanchemont corner, so Lewis could easily slow down the rhythm and finish safely the race on the slippery conditions and win the race with great euphoria. Felipe Massa, 2nd, and Nick Heidfield, 3rd, were next to him. What else? Ahh! A message about taking a decision of the stewards just appeared when the cars were approaching the Parc Fermé: ""Incident involving cars 1 and 22 under investigation", this means that stewards were going to do some kind of analysis about the fight between Kimi and Lewis, and probably with some penalty for one of them. The judges determined to settle a drive-through penalty to Lewis Hamilton for gaining advantage in the maneuver through the chicane after the race, translating that into time Lewis was meant a 25 s. penalty in his race time, finally achieving 3rd place. Massa and Heidfield went up one position, achieving 1st and 2nd. That brings Massa to a better place to fight for the championship, 2 points behind Hamilton.

Nico Rosberg and Kazuki Nakajima didn’t surprise, the circuit although wasn’t the best place for dreaming a great performance of the Williams FW30. Nico and Kazuki came to the race end 12th and 14th, without points and dropping a place on drivers champ for Nico. And can be expected that a position can be lost in the constructors champ, because Scuderia Toro Rosso is getting good results lately and seems they will better the mediocre season start with an incredible performance.
Team’s principals confirmed to the press sources that Williams F1 has already abandoned the development of the actual car and centers in the design and production of the FW31 for the next season, the FIA rule changes for 2009 rise the hopes of the team to design a better car and coming back regularly to the path of triumph. It’s known that the long term purposes of the AT&T Williams F1 Team are to better the team’s performance in the constructors championship and fight for the drivers championship, but the plans need to be developed well and working as soon as possible in the next car means a better result for 2009 season.

And following, the result tables updated after Belgian GP in Spa-Francorchamps last weekend:

Drivers results:

Constructor results:

Some words from the team after the race

The AT&T Williams team managed to make some modest progress over their qualifying positions in today’s Belgian GP by running a one stop strategy for both Kazuki Nakajima and Nico Rosberg. However, the progress was not sufficient to enable either driver to challenge for points. A last minute flurry of rain which made the track very slippery for the closing laps presented an opportunity for a late bid for points, but unfortunately the unscheduled stop for wet tyres did not come early enough for the team to capitalise on the weather.

Nico Rosberg:
It wasn’t such an exciting race for me today. Ultimately I did the best I could from where I started and the performance we had in the car and, I think adding all this up, 12th is probably about the best we could have achieved. At the end of the race we had to make the difficult judgement to come in for the wet tyres, and although we didn’t make any gain, I still think it was a good decision to take. Overall then, it wasn’t a good weekend for us and now we need to look forward to Monza and try to improve things. After the recent test there we are confident that it is a track that will suit us better.

Kazuki Nakajima:
Today was a difficult race for me. I had a bit of contact in the first corner which cost me some time, so from then on I just tried to maintain a consistent pace because I was on a one-stop strategy. Given this, I think my race pace was not bad compared with those around me. I made some progress during the race, then just at the end, the rain came and it was a tough call to either to stay on the slicks or try to see what the wets might do for us. In the end we made the stop and changed the tyres, but we didn’t have enough time to make up any ground.

Sam Michael, Technical Director:
It was a fairly uneventful race today as we were simply not competitive enough. We went for a one-stop strategy with both cars, which worked and helped to improve our position, but not enough for us to make progress into the points, which is what matters. The last lap dash on wets was a choice to see if we could make something of the opportunity, it worked for Heidfeld who jumped into a podium position, but there was insufficient track time for us to take advantage.

Source: © 2008 Williams F1

Results updated on 12th of September of 2008