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 focussed 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 understeering 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.

Williams