Williams' Australian GP review
AT&T Williams ran through Friday and Saturday morning’s practice sessions at a respectable pace, but experiencing poor grip levels when trying to extract the most out of the tyres during the qualifying session meant that the team qualified in p12 and p15.
As a consequence, both cars qualified among cars with a slower long run race pace. Nico Rosberg (2 stopping) managed to move up the field during the race, passing cars both in the pitlane (Kovalainen) and on the track (Schumacher) – in fact Nico only had 4 timed laps before the last pitstop that weren’t impeded by traffic. Alex Wurz (1 stopping) had little opportunity to move up through the field before his race came to a premature end when he was hit by David Coulthard 8 laps from the flag.
(Rosberg 7th place, Wurz 18th -> race)
Tyres & Fuel
Both cars started on the hard tyre, Rosberg repeating the selection for his second stint, and then took the soft tyre for the run to the flag. All other cars followed a similar tyre plan with the exception of Heidfeld and Massa who started the race on the soft tyre. Alex’s planned strategy was to start on the hard tyre and to run on the soft tyre to the finish. The fuel strategy was varied to provide tactical options with Rosberg fuelled five laps shorter in the first stint than Wurz.
Systems & Reliability
All systems ran reliably on both cars with the exception of a small electrical problem on Nico’s car in practice 3.
Next Events
The team will be attending the Malaysia test at Sepang, 23-25 March inclusive, running a single car for Alex (23rd, 24th) and Nico on 25th. The emphasis of the test will be to consider set-up strategies that enable the team to qualify more competitively without compromising race pace. However, with different environment conditions anticipated in Sepang such as a much more abrasive track surface and higher track temperatures (as well as likely precipitation), another set of variable factors will have to be incorporated into the team’s strategy for the next race.
