Williams woes continued through into qualifying in Abu Dhabi as they joined Lotus, Virgin and HRT at the back...
Williams:
Pastor Maldonado: "It's a long race here and we need to come up with a strong strategy to get a positive result from 23rd. We've obviously been thinking about our strategy all weekend because we've known about the grid penalty for a while now. We haven't decided 100% and we'll keep working on it tonight to make sure we give ourselves the best possible chance. I will do my best and I know the team will too. We must be confident."
Rubens Barrichello: "The team tried everything to fix the problem that we had this morning. Unfortunately, they weren't able to and I couldn't go out in qualifying. I fully support the team and know we will come through this smiling."
Team Lotus:
Heikki Kovalainen: "I am really pleased with that performance today. We definitely got as much performance as we could out of the car and to break into the 1.42s is very satisfying. I pretty much nailed the quick lap and I think we know that where we are on race pace gives us another chance of a strong finish tomorrow. I'm also looking forward to Brazil where we have an update to the rear wing coming - that should give us a better chance of using the DRS more effectively around the whole lap in qualifying, helping us get much closer to our race pace on Saturday afternoons, so another quick lap like that in Brazil with the update would be a great way to finish the qualifying sessions this season."
Jarno Trulli: "It's obviously been a tricky Saturday for me, having had to sit out FP3 when we found an issue with the gearbox that couldn't be fixed in time for me to run in that session. Despite that, the team worked well to fix the problem and gave me the chance to get out in qualifying without incurring any penalties, so putting together a lap that comfortably keeps me ahead of the guys behind is, in the circumstances, pretty good."
Virgin:
Timo Glock: "Today the car was a bit more difficult to drive than yesterday. We already struggled this morning with the braking - I just didn't have the confidence to go to the maximum and push. Depending on the corner, the rear end behaved differently, making it quite difficult for me to judge. But my qualifying lap was a good one and I am happy to be in front of HRT and pleased with the lap. It was good and no mistakes. But I'm sure that if we have more confidence in the car we can push more, so we have to look into this and understand why it changed overnight."
Jerome D'Ambrosio: "I had a reasonable qualifying today. I didn't get the perfect lap but equally it wasn't such a bad one. I'm looking forward to the race tomorrow as my set-up was oriented more towards the race rather than optimised for qualifying, so I like to think there is more to come. This is a special race track with the timing of the qualifying and race, as the reference points are gradually changing as the light is falling. I hope we can have a good two-car finish for the team."
HRT:
Daniel Ricciardo: "I'm happy with today's performance as we were a little bit unsure coming in to qualifying. I always tried to stay positive and believed that I could put in the best performance possible but there were a few doubts with the set-up and free practice hadn't gone well since yesterday. But we got out there and the car was good, I felt I drove well and managed to clock my best time on my last lap. I had a really good first sector and in the second sector I lost a bit of time because Glock had to let me through so I could've maybe even finished above him without that incident. But I pushed as much as I could like I always do and I'm very happy to get a good result out of it."
Tonio Liuzzi: "The result in qualifying was a shame because we'd had a good weekend up until qualifying. After my second run we suffered a broken suspension bracket and the car had massive understeering on left hand turns but I tried to continue doing some laps so that we could try and understand what the problem was exactly. The car wasn't fast at all and very unbalanced and that is why we were so far behind. It's a pity because this is a track where we could have achieved our best performance in qualifying this season. But we can still be competitive in tomorrow's race if we fix it; tomorrow is another day."
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