Williams: A collision, a gearbox failure, and no points

It was another tough race for Williams.

Over the weekend the team confirmed Mike Coughlan, who joined them in May, will be their new technical director.

	Rubens Barrichello	Pastor Maldonado
Qualifying position	15	13
Qualifying time comparison (Q2)	1’27.247 (+0.71)	1’26.537
Race position	15
Laps	58/60	12/60
Pit stops	2	0

Williams drivers’ lap times throughout the race (in seconds):

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/charts/2011drivercolours.csv

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30	31	32	33	34	35	36	37	38	39	40	41	42	43	44	45	46	47	48	49	50	51	52	53	54	55	56	57	58	59	60
Rubens Barrichello	129.967	129.277	96.725	95.04	94.534	94.008	94.089	93.776	93.546	93.824	94.619	96.164	95.147	97.083	93.23	92.538	92.805	93.047	94.029	95.298	93.957	93.01	94.155	93.702	94.435	92.382	92.135	94.062	91.695	94.683	91.913	91.621	92.087	91.531	95.153	111.841	90.607	90.184	92.008	91.793	91.939	89.981	90.574	89.758	89.413	89.762	90.165	89.82	89.855	91.03	91.529	90.003	89.96	89.634	91.238	88.635	90.849	90.712
Pastor Maldonado	104.517	97.527	95.191	94.66	94.347	94.287	93.944	93.629	93.826	94.049	94.279	93.573

Rubens Barrichello

Start tyre	Soft
Pit stop 1	Hard 33.65s
Pit stop 2	Soft 22.339s

Barrichello’s race was ruined when he tagged the back of his team mate’s car at the first corner, breaking his front wing.

He had to pit at the end of the first lap and switched to hard tyres to stay on a two-stop stint. He easily made his was past the HRTs and Virgins and set off after Heikki Kovalainen.

After switching to the soft tyres for his final stint he was catching the Lotus at around two seconds per lap. But he ran out of time to catch Kovalainen, finishing 15 seconds behind in 15th place.

Rubens Barrichello 2011 form guide

Pastor Maldonado

Start tyre

Soft

Maldonado out-qualified Barrichello for the eighth time this year and credited his engineers for getting him on the track at the right time. But his race ended early with gearbox failure.

Pastor Maldonado 2011 form guide

2011 Indian Grand Prix

Browse all 2011 Indian Grand Prix articles

Image ?�?� Williams/LAT

11 comments on “Williams: A collision, a gearbox failure, and no points”

Girts (@girts)
31st October 2011, 12:46
I’ve noticed that Williams have very short press releases, compared to the other teams. For sure, there ain’t many encouraging things to say at the moment.
BasCB (@bascb)
31st October 2011, 13:00
I still wonder wether the bump Maldonado got from his team mate might have done in his gearbox. Another race where he was starting to do a solid or even good job but it just wasn’t meant to be.
1. Fixy (@)
  31st October 2011, 14:02
  Pastor was looking strong, it’s a pity he couldn’t finish the race. However, looking at the top 10 it’s unlikely he could’ve been in there.
Alan (@dogmop)
31st October 2011, 14:56
As a Williams fan, I’d be disappointed if I didn’t just expect this sort of result. Rubens is getting slower and slower and Pastor is just having rotten luck, only real positive is that he was making progress up the field until the gearbox failure.
2 races of probable misery to go before I can begin optimistic about the team again.
Huron (@huron)
31st October 2011, 15:07
Hopefully Rubens will be able to score a point or two in the last two races. Judging by the BBC forum, they will probably be his last F1 races.
1. AndrewTanner (@andrewtanner)
  31st October 2011, 21:32
  @Huron That will be so sad. It’s not like Williams aren’t capable of championship winning stuff. I would love to see another year from Barrichello, just to see him have a go if another Williams, assuming it can’t be any worse than the FW33.
PJ (@)
31st October 2011, 16:05
One of the things I realised after the race was that Barrichello wasn’t shown at all through the entire race, except for in the general turn 1 shots where everybody was all over the place.
King Six (@kingsix)
31st October 2011, 16:56
Williams and Hamilton are probably begging for this season to just end immediately!
I really hope they keep that nifty lowline gearbox for next season even if it has had some issues, I hate seeing innovation like this go unrewarded!
AndrewTanner (@andrewtanner)
31st October 2011, 21:33
They must feel so incredibly lost at the moment. Best of luck for 2012 boys!
Prisoner Monkeys (@prisoner-monkeys)
1st November 2011, 7:07
Barrichello got shafted at the start, but it took him forty-three laps to catch Narain Karthikeyan.
Summarises Williams’ season, really.
1. bosyber (@bosyber)
  1st November 2011, 7:56
  That’s sounds pretty ominous, indeed.