Subscribe

Sign up for free

  • Get quick access to your favorite articles

  • Manage alerts on breaking news and favorite drivers

  • Make your voice heard with article commenting.

Motorsport prime

Discover premium content
Subscribe

Edition

Global
Practice report

Williams tested development package for 2014 on Friday practice for Abu Dhabi GP

Valtteri Bottas: "...we saw some interesting results and noticeable differences in the way the car performed."

Valtteri Bottas, Williams FW35

Photo by: XPB Images

Xevi Pujolar, Chief Race Engineer: We ran both cars on different aero configurations today, with Pastor running a development package for next year and Valtteri continuing with our standard package.

Valtteri Bottas, Williams FW35
Valtteri Bottas, Williams FW35

Photo by: XPB Images

The track was very slippery to start and both cars were struggling with overall grip.

In FP2 Pastor continued with some aero comparisons, as well as trying some mechanical tests aimed at getting more grip on the first lap of each run. Valtteri concentrated on short and long runs comparing the two compounds of tyre, with conditions in FP2 more representative of what we will see in the race.

The track conditions were improving throughout the day with the soft option tyre more susceptible to graining and the medium looking more consistent. Overall, Pastor's development package showed more positive results, so we will be fitting this across both cars for tomorrow.

Pastor Maldonado: It was a good day for us today. We completed our planned programme and the car felt quicker with the new updates. There are still some balance issues we need to work on, but overall there seems to be more potential in this package.

We now need to check the data and thoroughly analyse today's sessions to make further progress tomorrow, but I think we can find a bit more speed than we had today.

Valtteri Bottas: We tried some interesting things on Pastor's car today with a view to 2014 and we saw some interesting results and noticeable differences in the way the car performed. We will have a busy night tonight analysing the data we have and now it is about maximising what we have and trying to get every tenth out of the car. I'm confident we can still gain some more speed for tomorrow's qualifying and the car seems to suit this track a little better than it has the last few circuits.

Williams F1 Team

Be part of Motorsport community

Join the conversation
Previous article A challenging Friday practice for Toro Rosso at Abu Dhabi
Next article Graham Macdonald Becomes CEO of Caterham Group

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

Sign up for free

  • Get quick access to your favorite articles

  • Manage alerts on breaking news and favorite drivers

  • Make your voice heard with article commenting.

Motorsport prime

Discover premium content
Subscribe

Edition

Global