Williams Abu Dhabi GP Friday practice report

Objectives P1 & P2
• Race preparation work
• Car balance optimisation
• Tyre testing

Rubens Barrichello, Williams F1 Team

Photo by: xpb.cc

Rubens Barrichello:

We had a little set back up in the morning with a problem with the engine so we were playing catch up in the afternoon. The team did a good job to change the engine between sessions. The one we ran in the second session had quite a few kilometres on it already now that we are near the end of the season, but it did a good job.

Pastor Maldonado:

We covered all our scheduled running today. For me, that included working hard on optimising the set-up of my car for the race because of the grid penalty. We still have to do some more work in order to find a better balance. If we can do that, it will help our performance a bit. The tyres are doing well here; degradation is quite low, so that’s a positive.

Mark Gillan, Chief Operations Engineer:

Pastor concluded a full test programme today working on optimising his race set-up. Rubens had a slow start to the day as a result of an automatic engine kill which was triggered by an engine oil system issue. The mechanics changed the engine quickly and he was able to complete the second session in full with no further problems.