Initial pace not great for Williams
Although Williams managed to complete its planned programme during the first two practice sessions of the weekend, each of the three drivers that came into action were not entirely happy. Pastor Maldonado in particular was struggling with a balance issue that needs to be resolved.
The team focused during its Friday runs on aero evaluations, tyre runs and set-up work. In th afternoon, longer runs were carried out to learn about the potential race pace.
Mark Gillan, Chief Operations Engineer:
"As we have seen in previous years the track evolution on the Friday is very big with low levels of grip to start with. We completed a very full combined development and set-up balance optimisation programme with our three drivers. We have a few areas to improve on for tomorrow and Pastor also had a car issue throughout FP2 which we are currently investigating."
Bruno Senna:
"It was a productive day for me. Missing the first session wasn’t ideal because I’m not so familiar with this track and my experience here in the last two years has been hampered by rain. But in the end I think we got a good idea of the direction we need to go to improve. It’s going to be very tough, we can see that in low fuel situations some cars are faster than others, so we need to improve on that, but I’m confident that we can start the race further up the grid."
Pastor Maldonado:
"It was a difficult day today which means we have a lot of work to do before qualifying. The track is quite challenging anyway, but we had some problems in the car this afternoon which we now need to analyse to make sure we can resolve them before tomorrow."
Valtteri Bottas:
"It took quite a few laps to get into the rhythm today. It’s a new track for me so I was just learning the corners and the feel of the track initially. I did my best lap time on the last lap as I couldn’t get everything out of the car in the first two sessions when the tyres might have been best. But again, a very positive session for me and the team – we managed to complete all our planned tests and got some good data that we will now analyse and learn from."
