Canadian GP: Williams Friday practice notes

The AT&T Williams team had a productive day in preparation for tomorrow's qualifying for the Canadian GP. The characteristics of the temporary street circuit changed significantly over the course of today's two sessions at precisely the same time as ...

The AT&T Williams team had a productive day in preparation for tomorrow's qualifying for the Canadian GP. The characteristics of the temporary street circuit changed significantly over the course of today's two sessions at precisely the same time as track engineers and drivers are attempting to find an optimal set-up.

Although both cars experienced some technical problems in the second session, Nico managed to record the sixth quickest time of the day and although Alex was slower, he declared himself satisfied with the data generated to help prepare for tomorrow's qualifying session.

Nico Rosberg:
It was quite difficult out there today, especially concerning tyre choice, but we tried a few things and made some progress. We just have to wait and see, really, but all in all I think it was an okay Friday for us.

Alex Wurz:
We didn't have two perfect sessions today, but nevertheless I think we generated enough data to optimise our package for tomorrow. I did my tyre comparison very early in the second session under yellow flags when the circuit wasn't so great, but I just need to stay calm and use what we learnt today to get the best out of tomorrow.

Kazuki Nakajima:
Obviously it was my first time on the track this morning and it was really green and slippery to begin with, so it was not easy to set a good time, but I think I learnt my way round quickly and then tried some downforce variations in order to generate some data. I was happy with what we did today even though I did make one little mistake. We didn't look very quick in the morning, but as often seems to be the case, we will improve relatively as the track cleans up over the weekend.

Sam Michael, Technical Director:
Today we worked through the usual Friday programme, concentrating on set up and particularly brakes as these are important in Canada. Kazuki and Alex started off the programme in the morning, checking the two tyres and Nico took over from Kazuki for the afternoon session and worked on a couple of different set-up items as well as checking brakes on a couple of long runs. We had a pneumatic leak on Nico's car which lost him some track time this afternoon and on Alex's car we also had a small problem with a fastener on the suspension we had to check, but otherwise everything ran to plan.