Uneventful first day for the Williams squad
With heavy downpour interrupting the second practice session in Suzuka, Williams was unable to get some proper runs and only managed to accumulate 16 laps between both drivers. The team is now hoping for a drier third session come Saturday.
Objectives FP1
- Wet running and wet tyre compare
- Aero systems checks
- Set-up tuning for the wet
Grid starts
Sam Michael, Technical Director
“It was a fairly uneventful day in terms of running the cars due to the weather. We checked both full wet and intermediate tyres and the wet set-up. Now we’ll prepare the cars for qualifying with new engines and the race gearboxes. We’ll have to be conservative on the gear ratios tonight due to no dry running at all.”
Runs FP1: Run 1 new wets (1 lap) install, run 2 scrubbed wets (4 laps) baseline, run 3 new inters (8 laps) mechanical set-up, run 4 scrubbed inters (7 laps) fuel system test.
Runs FP2: Run 1 scrubbed wets (8 laps) set-up tuning for the wet and grid start.
“Today was just a matter of trying out the tyres in order to get an understanding of where the change over points are and how the inters and full wets are working, degradation-wise. What was clear was that I pretty much destroyed the wets when the track dried out. With the information from both cars, we now have a good understanding of what is going on.”
Runs FP1: Run 1 new wets (1 lap) install, run 2 new inters (10 laps) baseline, run 3 scrubbed inters (7 laps) mechanical set-up and fuel system test.
Runs FP2: Run 1 scrubbed wets (8 laps) set-up tuning for the wet and grid start.
“Not a great day in terms of weather, but in terms of results it was ok. We didn’t get many laps in, but those we did get gave us a good platform for any potential wet weather running over the weekend. It looks positive, so hopefully we’ll be in the same position tomorrow for qualifying, but in the dry, preferably!”
