Williams completes trouble free race simulations

F1 Test, Barcelona, Circuit de Catalunya

Williams enjoyed a strong third day of testing at Barcelona, with drivers Pastor Maldonado and Valtteri Bottas sharing the driving duties. Both men managed to complete a successful race simulation, along with doing set-up work and tyre testing.

Mike Coughlan, Technical Director: It’s been a very good day for us. We’ve completed two race simulations and both drivers were happy with their individual programmes. We’re really pleased with the reliability we have shown this week, having completed 147 laps with the FW35 today, 331 laps in total so far this week. We feel we have got a good car to now start developing and we look forward to continuing tomorrow.

Pastor Maldonado: It was a good morning for me. The track was still very cold when we did our first run on new tyres, but the time still looked competitive. We then moved into a race simulation and our race pace looks consistent. We completed our full programme without issue which is positive. The FW35 feels very comfortable to drive so I’m feeling happy.

Valtteri Bottas: We started the afternoon with some shorter runs but we still haven’t seen the full potential of the FW35. I have been able to improve some things in my driving since yesterday, but there are still things I can work on compared to Pastor. We then completed a race simulation. Unfortunately it was cut a little short due to the red flag at the end, but we were still able to try all the tyre compounds and I was able to get a good feeling for how the tyres behave. Overall, the car feels really nice on the longer runs, which is promising.

The Williams F1 Team will be back on track tomorrow, Friday 22 February, with Valtteri Bottas driving in the morning session and Pastor Maldonado driving the afternoon session for the final day of the test.