Bottas makes testing debut as Williams race driver

F1 Test, Jerez, Circuit Permanente de Jerez

After two days of testing with Pastor Maldonado, today it was the debut of Valtteri Bottas. Although has already has some testing experience with the Williams FW34, this marks his first outing as the team's official race driver.

Mike Coughlan, Technical Director: "We’ve had a productive day today with Valtteri completing a busy test programme without issue. We did a number of higher fuel runs as Valtteri clocked up 86 laps on his first outing as an official race driver for the team. The Jerez circuit is quite aggressive on tyres and we have already gained a lot of data over the last two days, so we decided to switch our focus. Aside from some core mechanical work in preparation for the FW35, we focussed on further aero evaluations throughout the day and gathered all the data we required."

Valtteri Bottas: "It was my first day as an official race driver today and it’s been a long wait. Since the announcement last year I’ve been looking forward to this day and it’s great to finally get the season underway. Everything went as planned and we completed a lot of laps doing both aero and tyre work to gather some good data. It was a great start to 2013 for me."

The Williams F1 Team will be back on track tomorrow, Friday 8 February, with Valtteri Bottas continuing in the FW34 for the final day of the test.