Practice report

Williams targeted technical objectives in Singapore Friday practice

Bruno Senna, Williams

Photo by: xpb.cc

Mark Gillan, Chief Operations Engineer: After the track had dried from the earlier thunder storm ahead of FP1, we managed to get some decent set-up work completed on the soft tyre. Our FP2 programme was somewhat curtailed when Bruno hit the wall whilst on a hot lap on the supersoft tyre. Despite this, we extracted enough feedback and data in the session for both our qualifying and race preparation.

Pastor Maldonado: It was a good day as we completed our plan. We lost one run in FP1 due to the weather, as the track was still wet, but I’m happy we were able to get all the data we needed. We need to work on our performance but the consistency of the car looks good.

It’s difficult to say where we are at this stage as we don’t know what everyone else is doing and this track can be quite unpredictable. The track is also improving all the time so we’ll see tomorrow. You have to change your approach in Singapore but I really enjoy it. It’s both physically and mentally challenging for drivers, but it is an amazing circuit to drive.

Bruno Senna: It wasn’t an ideal day but I was still able to learn a lot about the car and we have a good idea on the direction we will take tomorrow. I made a mistake in FP2 and touched the wall which damaged the car. I was trying to push hard and on a track like this unfortunately that means you can end up in the wall.

There isn’t too much damage so we need to work hard to be 100 per cent ready for tomorrow. We are aiming for the top ten but the grid is looking very tight so we are going to have to push very hard. It’s going to be important to qualifying as far forward as possible at this circuit but the competition is strong.

Source: Williams F1 Team