Following Thursday’s two practice sessions in Monaco, the AT&T Williams team again demonstrated competitive pace, but contrary to some commentators’ expectations, carried their form through into the tactically critical qualifying session on Saturday. Kazuki Nakajima matched his career-best 10th place which made it his first appearance in Q3 this season, and indeed since Singapore last year.

Nico Rosberg showed strongly in his first timed laps in final qualifying and, in discussion with his engineers, confirmed that there was more in the car. It was a disappointment to him that traffic in his final pair of timed laps didn’t allow him to demonstrate his full pace. Equally, given the potential pace of the FW31, the Williams engineers had carried fuel into Q3 for a strategy that was based on a higher grid slot, which meant Nico’s race plan was somewhat compromised from the off, carrying a lighter and less-than-optimal fuel load.

On Sunday, both drivers had clean starts and held their grid positions, but in a bid to allow his race strategy to work, Nico made two well-judged overtaking passes on Massa on lap 7 and Vettel on lap 8, taking advantage of the better performance of his prime tyres, climbing to P4 and briefly leading the race as the first round of stops got underway. Unfortunately, after pitting on lap 18 and fuelling for a long middle stint, Nico had shown his hand first and lost track position to Mark Webber and Felipe Massa who responded with a shorter first stop.

As the order shook out, Nico ran through the second round of stops and onto the flag in P6. Kazuki by comparison ran a long first stint, fuelled to almost mid-distance, but found his progress plagued by traffic from two-stopping cars rejoining, resulting in him dropping off for blue flags. Despite this, Kazuki was on course for a top ten finish until he suffered an accident in the closing phase of the race on lap 77.