Better than Friday, Williams are 13th and 14th on the Japanese GP grid although still the slowest team bar the newbies...
Williams:
Rubens Barrichello: "First of all I want to thank the team for working so hard on making the changes I wanted. The car wasn't behaving well in practice this morning so we changed almost everything on it before qualifying. Everyone did a great job turning it around in time. The changes really transformed the car and we pulled off a strong lap this afternoon."
Pastor Maldonado: "Quite a difficult qualifying for me, primarily because we lost a lot of track time during yesterday's practice. We made a few changes after this morning's session and we managed to get a good lap out of the car in qualifying. I don't have the balance I'd like, but we have time go through everything and do some more work ahead of the race."
Team Lotus:
Heikki Kovalainen: "I'm pretty happy with that, particularly as it was one run, one lap to get it right, and I nailed it straight out of the box. We took the riskier strategy with the tyres, went out late in the session and I think I may have even been able to find a bit more in the first sector, but overall I'm pleased. I went through 130R with the rear wing open which was pretty hardcore, but having been bold with the tyres we're in a good position for the race tomorrow. There's been quite a lot of talk about the tyre wear here but I'm not sure the degradation will be as big a problem as people thought. The long run on the soft tyres yesterday was good - I think we can get maybe up to 15 laps out of them, and as we have a few new sets ready to go tomorrow it'll be an interesting afternoon."
Jarno Trulli: "That was a good session. The car felt much better this afternoon as we made the right changes to the setup and even though I made a couple of mistakes on my quickest lap I still don't think I could have got much more out of it. Tomorrow we'll fight as hard as possible in the race and give our Japanese fans something to cheer for. Our pace in the races has been good all season, so I hope I can make as good a start as I have been in a lot of the races this year, play with the tyre strategies and see where we end up."
Virgin:
Jerome D'Ambrosio: "It was a good Saturday. We had a very good last lap, something which is difficult to achieve here. You want to push hard, but you still have to think, as it's all about priorities and working out which corners to sacrifice. I'm pretty happy about today, especially because we turned it around - yesterday was a difficult day and we managed to do well at a track like Suzuka. I'm really happy. I worked well together with the engineers and I think that thanks to this combination we improved the car and my driving."
Timo Glock: "For me I think it was a good qualifying session. Going from Free Practice 3 to Qualifying was a bit blind again because we tried something overnight which didn't really work out as we had hoped, so we had to go back on that between sessions. In the end the car was really good and my lap was pretty spot-on. There's not much to say apart from I think today Jérôme was slightly quicker and he did a good job. I'm happy with the car so we'll see what happens tomorrow."
Hispania:
Daniel Ricciardo: "From my point of view it was not a bad session. I approached it well and did what I had to do. In qualifying you have to push 100% and I definitely did that. I went a little bit wide in some areas from pushing too much but I'd say I only lost about a tenth which isn't enough to get in front of our rivals. I am satisfied because the balance of the car was the best it's been all weekend but the others have also improved and we have to keep on working. Anyways it's time to focus on the race where I'm keen to put in a good performance."
Tonio Liuzzi: "It's been a terrible start to the weekend. Yesterday I could only do four laps, eight this morning after an engine issue and this afternoon again problems so in the end I've hardly done any laps in two days. We'll start from last position, which isn't very positive, and it's a shame because the few laps we did weren't too bad. But this is one of the best races of the season with a great atmosphere so I'm hoping to put this behind me and have a good race tomorrow."
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