2016 Williams Martini Racing F1 Team - Mercedes

[LookBackTime]

MONACO GP PRACTICE

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26 MAY 2016
Monaco, Monte Carlo
3.337 km / 2.074 miles

FP1
Weather: Warm and Dry
Air & Track Temperatures: 18-20°C / 23-30°C
V Bottas, FW38-03, PU106C Hybrid, 1:17.562 (11th)
F Massa, FW38-02, PU106C Hybrid, 1:18.746 (19th)
Quickest time: L. Hamilton (1:15.537)

FP2
Weather: Warm and Dry
Air & Track Temperatures: 18-20°C / 34-37°C
V Bottas, FW38-03, PU106C Hybrid, 1:16.849 (14th)
F Massa, FW38-02, PU106C Hybrid, 1:17.286 (16th)
Quickest time: D. Ricciardo (1:14.607)

Objectives: Aero evaluations, set-up and tyre work.

Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering: It was a typical Monaco Thursday, with everything thrown at it. We had the unfortunate incident with Felipe in FP1, and the guys in the garage did a brilliant job to get him back out for FP2. We’ve got everything done that we needed to between the cars, despite that. It’s just unfortunate that Felipe has missed some running on the track, which is really important in Monaco. He’ll have to recover from that on Saturday morning. Valtteri got through everything we wanted. We’ve done long enough runs on each of the tyre compounds, so we’ve got a good idea how they’ll behave. Now it’s a case of getting ourselves ready for Saturday. There’s a lot to do and look through, as usual, but fortunately we’ve got an extra day to do it.

Valtteri Bottas: We did a lot of laps today. The car set-up felt better than what we have tried here before. At the same time, it was more difficult to drive, with quite a bit of oversteer, so I was a little nervous. I had a bit of a moment in FP1, but that’s part of it. It’s a tough track. The times are looking very close, so any gain we can make before qualifying will be very useful.

Felipe Massa: It was a difficult morning, losing so much time in the session when I could have been driving. I missed a lot of laps, and we know in Monaco it is important to be on the track all the time you can. It was not a very good afternoon for us. We struggled to get good lap times . We’re missing grip and traction, so we need to work on the car to try to improve and make it more competitive for this track, especially for the race. It is a very special weekend where I always enjoy driving, seeing the fans and how special this race is for them – so I hope we can do well for them.

[Stalker1]

Williams pace in Monaco has been improved compared to last years qualification at least. About 0.4s per lap.

https://www.formula1.com/content/fom-we ... fying.html
http://www.f1technical.net/news/20346

[Stalker1]

Bottas indicating the problems with oversteering. Does that mean they have managed to move the aerobalance centre, this time too much to the rear, as the overstreering tendecy indicates?

I can see times for P12-P17 are really close, P11 is about 0.25s ahead. Too early to judge, but I would be impressed if they manage to get into Q3!

[LookBackTime]

I fell off my chair - Claire Williams on Bernie Ecclestone

http://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/36403643

[tomazy]

I fell off my chair - Claire Williams on Bernie Ecclestone

http://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/36403643

Audi RS6 and Porsche turbo, my kind of girl

[LookBackTime]

MONACO GP QUALIFYING

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28 MAY 2016
Monte Carlo, Monaco
3.337 km / 2.074 miles

Qualifying Notes
• Valtteri Bottas qualified 11th and Felipe Massa 14th for the Monaco Grand Prix
• Both drivers comfortably progressed into Q2 after posting times of 1:15.521 (Valtteri, 12th) and 1:15.710 (Felipe, 15th) on ultrasoft tyres
• The team’s performance at Monaco has improved from last year, but both drivers fell just short of making it into Q3
• Valtteri will start 10th on the grid, due to a five-place penalty for Kimi Raikkonen following a gearbox change

Weather: Warm and dry
Temperature: Air: 21-23°C Track: 38-44°C

Q1
V. Bottas: 1:15.521 (12th)
F. Massa: 1:15.710 (15th)
Quickest time: S. Vettel 1:14.610

Q2
V. Bottas: 1:15.273 (11th)
F. Massa: 1:15.385 (14th)
Quickest time: N. Rosberg 1:14.043

Q3
Quickest time: D. Ricciardo 1:13.622

Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering: This isn’t where we want to be, but it’s a step better than where we were last year. We managed to get the most out of the car. If we put our top sectors together, we’d be in the back end of the top 10. If you look at our times against the top cars, we can see that we have made progress and it’s now clear where we need to develop the car if we want to go faster in Monaco. We have worked very hard to get the set-up better around here and now this is a car that could have scraped into the top 10. We can have a reasonable race tomorrow. Valtteri will start from a point-scoring position in 10th with a free choice of tyres, and Felipe 14th. With the attrition we usually see and with a decent tyre strategy, we can definitely get both cars into the points and that is our aim.

Valtteri Bottas: Obviously we’re not happy to be out of Q3, but we’ve made progress, which is good. We just need to try to make more – and there’s a good chance to get my first points here. This is one of the busiest race in terms of what happens on track with safety cars, so we need to take that opportunity to get some good points.

Felipe Massa: It wasn’t an easy qualifying for us. We were fighting for one tenth the whole time. Unfortunately, without that one tenth we are down a few positions. It’s really a shame because it’s just so close. It wasn’t our day for getting the most out of the car with what happened with the red flags, however the car is behaving well. It won’t be easy to get points but we’ll try the best we can.

[bill shoe]

I fell off my chair - Claire Williams on Bernie Ecclestone

http://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/36403643

Audi RS6 and Porsche turbo, my kind of girl

The fact that she has an F1 team doesn't do it for you, but you like her for the road cars?

[LookBackTime]

MONACO GRAND PRIX

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29 MAY 2016
Circuit de Monaco, Monte Carlo
3.337 km / 2.074 miles

Weather: Wet and cool
Temperature: Air: 22-24°C, Track: 33-38°C

Race Notes
• Felipe Massa finished 10th and Valtteri Bottas 12th in today’s Monaco Grand Prix
• Felipe was able to take advantage of changing conditions throughout the race to move forward from his grid position as he switched from wet to intermediate and then dry tyres. But Valtteri lost time in a pitstop and had further misfortune with traffic, which cost him track position
• Valtteri finished the race 11th but was demoted to 12th by a 10-second time penalty, applied by the stewards for causing a collision with Gutierrez
• Felipe remains seventh and Valtteri eighth in the Drivers’ Championship, while the team maintains fourth in the Constructors’ Championship

Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering: We got a point today. It’s not exactly what we want but one is better than none. We want a lot more and we’ll try a lot harder to get them. We were quite quick on dry tyres in that midfield pack, and Felipe set the fastest lap on the intermediate tyres, so the pace of the car wasn’t as bad as last year, which is a positive. Felipe drove a very clean race and got us a point. We kept him out on the extreme wet tyres and he got out in front of the pack held up behind Werhlein, so his race was pretty much set from there. We pitted Valtteri early for inters to try to release a bit of pace on that tyre. Unfortunately, we had a rear jack failure in the pitstop which cost us because that put him out behind Werhlein. His race was very difficult from then on because he couldn’t pass him. We could have got him P7-9 without that. Generally, the race was bittersweet. We’ve made really good progress around Monaco compared to the last two years, but we haven’t been able to convert that into the amount of points we should have done. Looking forward, we’re going to Canada, Azerbaijan, Austria and Great Britain – a series of races we can capitalise on. We’re still fourth in the championship, and Red Bull didn’t score the amount of points they could have. We’ve got good developments coming, and we won’t be giving up the fight this season.

Valtteri Bottas: It was of course disappointing to finish outside the points. I think we really need to look at our strategy and why we lost a good position after the track was starting to dry. It’s possible we stopped at the wrong time, but the conditions were tricky today and it wasn’t an easy race.

Felipe Massa: It was a very tough day, having to start in the wet with laptimes of 1m40s and upwards. It was looking like a very difficult race to finish, so the positive thing is I managed that. It was definitely the most difficult race weekend of the season so far, but one point is better than zero.

[LookBackTime]

waiting for downforce stats

[szilva01]

waiting for downforce stats

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CjqFQi-WsAAIaWx.jpg

This pit lane dominance is starting to get ridiculous.

[Martin_F]

They said on the Sky coverage that they'll have a special on the pit stops during the Canada Grand Prix.
I'm looking forward to that!

[LookBackTime]

Fitness focus: What it takes off-track to stay on the road to F1

http://www.motorsport.com/eurof3/news/f ... f1-742525/

[LookBackTime]

Felipe Massa: Ready for a strong summer now

http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/felip ... ow-742408/

[godlameroso]

Anyone notice Williams sudden loss of form relative to previous years coincides with Suzie Wolff removing her interest in the team?

[F1NAC]

Anyone notice Williams sudden loss of form relative to previous years coincides with Suzie Wolff removing her interest in the team?

I think its just a coincidence. They were good at the beginning of this era only because others failed regarding to PU. But others are now improving on that field so their weak chasis (df related) is slipping with whole team through the field. Either way I expect them to be near front on low DF related circuits