Williams look to close 2006 on a high

The Williams F1 team seem to be heading in the right direction for the Brazilian GP. Initial setup work proved succesful and the performance and reliability of Wurz' car were very good, resulting in a fastest time in the second free practice.

“We have done some good homework for the race, running both tyres, which both look like possible race tyres, but we’ll be going through the data and making a decision on that tonight. We didn’t have any mechanical problems and Alex came out well among the Friday drivers, which is good for him. Nico had to learn the track, as he was driving here for the first time. As a team today we gathered useful data.”

“It’s the end, no more Friday driver role for me! I’m really pleased that I had such a good last lap. In fact, if I can squeeze some laps like that out of the car next year, where there are no mistakes and everything was fine, I will be very happy. The work we did today was good; we completed our usual tyre tests as well as some set-up comparisons and brake work. Now we need to get our heads together with our engineers to make sure we have a good package for tomorrow’s qualifying and the race on Sunday.”
Mark Webber:
“We went through our usual Friday programme and I had a few laps in the afternoon session to get a feel for the car on this track. We did some wing comparisons here and there and checked a few things out so we have lots of data to look through tonight from Alex’s running.”

“This afternoon was my first outing at Interlagos. It’s not too hard a track to learn and I found my rhythm pretty quickly. It’s definitely a nice track, good fun and enjoyable to drive. We based today’s sessions on tyre tests and we definitely achieved some good results and the Bridgestones are looking strong here. We also did some aero comparisons to see what the optimum set-up will be and have some very good results there too. It was a good job from Alex to be quickest in the second session and I hope we can keep the pace going over the weekend.”

“In what is likely to be Cosworth’s final Friday practice session in Formula One for the foreseeable future, all three CA2006 V8 engines ran flawlessly today, allowing WilliamsF1 to complete their programme as planned. It’s going to be an emotional weekend for Cosworth, but it’s great to be topping the time sheets today.”