All good for Williams on first day
Williams enjoyed a good first day at Spa-Francorchamps, even though the weather somehow disrupted the Friday programme. The team have nonetheless found a good baseline setup with sufficient downforce to look forward to the rest of the weekend.
Sam Michael, Technical Director:
With wet running in both of today’s practice sessions, we had to re-prioritise the test items we had on our list, but the rain would have affected all of the teams today. This is Spa as well, so we're used to it here! There’s a reasonable chance that the remainder of the weekend will be wet, so we were also saving tyres throughout the day. We are now working on strategy and our ideal qualifying and race set-up.
Rubens Barrichello:
Runs P1: Run 1: New Wet (1 lap, installation check), Run 2: Used Wet (6 laps, baseline)
Runs P2: Run 1: Used Wet (4 laps, set-up test), Run 2: New Intermediate (5 laps, tyre evaluation), Run 3: New Prime (7 laps, tyre evaluation), Run 4: New Option (2 laps, red flag), Run 5: Used Option (4 laps, tyre evaluation)
"Today was a classic Spa scenario with the weather and I love it because it throws everything up in the air! The car is fine, but like everyone, we had neither sufficient dry or wet running to really optimise in either condition, which leaves some question marks for us and I am sure everyone else, to resolve, but we had a productive day nevertheless."
Nico Hulkenberg:
Runs P1: Run 1: New Wet (1 lap, installation check), Run 2: Used Wet (8 laps, baseline set-up), Run 3: Used Wet (1 lap, set-up test, aborted), Run 4: Used Wet (7 laps, set-up test)
Runs P2: Run 1: New Intermediate (4 laps, tyre evaluations), Run 2: Used Intermediate (3 laps, set-up test), Run 3: New Prime (6 laps, tyre evaluation), Run 4: New Option (3 laps, tyre evaluation), Run 5: Used Option (4 laps, race set-up)
"Of course it has been a typical Spa day with very mixed weather, but it was been quite alright for us. The most notable issue has been the intermediates and the full wets being soft for the track here and degrading early. Other than that, the day has run pretty well and we seem to have found good downforce settings for the circuit. I think we were P8 although it was not on the sheets because of the red flag, so it is all positive today."
