Williams Martini Racing has finally confirmed Valtteri Bottas will race with the team for a fifth consecutive season, with Lance Stroll making his Formula One debut alongside him for the 2017 FIA Formula One World Championship.
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3rd constructors may already be a stretch goal. 4th would be decent. The Bernie money for 3rd vs. 4th is not a huge deal, but in the bigger picture it brings the whole Williams strategy into question. The 2016 car has had setbacks, but it is not a problematic car as far as I can tell. It's just not good enough to take the fight to Merc and Ferrari. Or Red Bull.
Is Williams a front-runner that challenges for the occasional win, or are they the best of the mid-field? That's the difference between 3rd and 4th, but it feels like a bigger difference than 3 vs. 4.
I hope one of the Williams drivers gets into an on-track pissing match with a frontrunner to inspire everyone else on the team. In the meantime, quickest pitstops are a great peg to hang the hats on.
Last edited by bill shoe on 19 Apr 2016, 01:59, edited 1 time in total.
Stalker1 wrote:Well, good news for Williams. They need all the advertising they can get. How exactly they measure the pit-stop time?
I think they can actually measure the stationary time of each car. So in theory the tire change itself could be done quickly but if the driver waits the extra tenth or two before leaving they will fall behind. Being quickest depends on the tire changes, the go-signal, and the driver to all be synched quite well.
Today is Felipe Massa's birthday. He is now 35, the third oldest in the grid (Button and Kimi). The old lad is doing just fine this year, and currently holds the sixth place in the drivers standings. Lets hope he can get at least a podium this weekend as gift.
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29 APR 2016
Sochi, Russia
5.848kms/3.634 miles
FP1
Weather: Warm and dry
Air & Track Temperatures: 15-16C / 27-31C
F Massa, FW38-02, PU106C Hybrid 1:39.365 (5th)
V Bottas, FW38-03, PU106C Hybrid 1:39.802 (7th)
Quickest time: N Rosberg (1:38.127)
FP2
Weather: Warm and dry
Air & Track Temperature: 16-17C / 39-41C
V Bottas, FW38-03, PU106C Hybrid 1:39.185 (6th)
F Massa, FW38-02, PU106C Hybrid 1:39.289 (9th)
Quickest time: L Hamilton (1:37.583)
Objectives: Aero evaluations, set-up and tyre work.
Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering: We had a very complex test programme today. We looked at various suspension and set-up options, we’ve been looking at aerodynamic configurations with the front wing, and we’ve been doing our homework on the tyres, so it’s been really busy. We’ve collected all of the data that we need to but we have a long night ahead to make sure we have the car optimised for tomorrow. The team’s done a good job in getting through the programme after the clutch actuation problem we had with Felipe’s car this morning, which put us on the back foot, but we managed to recover and get through everything that we needed to. The car looks reasonably competitive on low and especially high fuel, which is what we’re always working towards. So for this stage of the weekend we are where we need to be, maybe even a little bit further up the road.
Valtteri Bottas: It was a good Friday. We managed to test everything we had planned to, including a number of new aero parts. The results from these tests are looking good which is positive. Tyre behaviour is the key at this track and that will be our focus tonight. We’ll be trying to get a bit more out of the shorter runs and maybe we can also still improve on the longer runs, although our long run pace is looking good at the moment so I’m hopeful that we can do well over the weekend.
Felipe Massa: I think it was a positive day. I’m happy with how the car is performing in the short runs and the long runs with the tyres. I think that maybe this is a better track for us than other tracks. But we just need to wait and see, and try to do the best we can.
