No problems for Williams on first day

After a week of testing at Monza last week, the Williams F1 Team cut short their Friday testing programme. Alexander Wurz mainly focused on the tyre choice for this weekend's Italian GP. Race drivers Nico Rosberg and Mark Webber had a standard Friday programme and seem to be ready for the qualifying session.

“We had slightly less than a normal Friday schedule because of all the testing that we did here last week, so in the afternoon session we revised our programme on Alex’s car to concentrate on grip levels on new tyres. In the rest of the practice sessions we did normal runs to check our race performance. Everything is fine, cooling is ok and both the tyres that Bridgestone brought here look strong.”

“Obviously we had quite a lot of knowledge from the test here last week, nevertheless we still went through a more or less normal Friday procedure today, which is mainly tyre comparison. I am pretty confident about which way we will be going with tyre choice and we also managed to find a good balance on the car. Now we just need to analyse today’s work compared to what we found at the test. Otherwise I think I’ve prepared the car quite well for the race drivers in terms of brakes, balance and how to manage the car on a high fuel load.”

“I had a good session today, we tried a few things out, some of which worked, some didn’t, but all of this will help with our preparation for the rest of the weekend alongside what we found here at the test last week. We spent some time looking at the best balance between wing level and top speed. I was also very happy with the tyres today and the Bridgestones are performing well here at Monza. With what I learnt today and all the data gathered from Alex, we will spent tonight putting all the pieces together for tomorrow.”

“It all went well today and we had a good standard Friday and managed to run through our programme without any problems. We will plug all of what we have learnt together tonight in preparation for tomorrow.”

“As one would expect after testing here for three days last week, today’s engine program was mainly focussed on allowing Alex lap time to carry out the preparatory work for Saturday and Sunday. Although Mark carries his engine over from Istanbul, both he and Nico have the latest performance specification of CA2006 engine which will afford them the most aggressive duty Cosworth has brought to an event this year, the culmination of both extensive dyno and recent track testing. There were no issues with any of the engines we ran today.”