Barcelona
Test One – Day Four
Driver: Sergey Sirotkin (AM), Lance Stroll (PM)
Chassis / Engine: FW41-01 / Mercedes-AMG F1 M09 EQ Power+
Location: Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, 4.655 km
Weather: Cold and wet (AM), Warm and dry (PM) Temperatures (min-max): Air
8-16ºC / Track 8-13ºC
The final day of the Williams Martini teams Barcelona test would see Sergey
Sirotkin run in the morning and Lance Stroll in the afternoon.
At the end of
the morning session it would be forty seven laps completed by Sergey this
morning. His run would see him on first the full wet and then the
intermediate tyre. Sergey would stop his test just as the track dried out so
his time would see him down the order which was not surprising as all his
track time was in the wet.
Lance would take over in the afternoon when the track was drying out. Lance
would set a 1m:36.864 on his first timed lap. Improving to get down to a
1m:24.597.
Lance would progress moving up into sixth place. The Canadian has set 19
laps since taking over from Sergey Sirotkin this afternoon. His last lap was
a 1:21.980 running on the soft tyre and he has now returned to the pits.
Further runs would see him improve with a 1m:21.142 to finish the day in
seventh.
Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer: It’s been a very difficult week
weather-wise but actually, we’re very happy to have made the most of the
conditions we had. We’ve recorded huge amounts of data and we’ve achieved a
lot of very reliable running without any failure and we’ve had our first
look at the performance of the car on laps, although the final afternoon was
the only day of anything like reasonable temperatures for running a racing
car. A great job has been done by the team considering this car had not even
fired up a week ago and a great job by Lance, Sergey and Robert to manage
the car in such difficult conditions without causing any damage. We look
forward to coming back next week for hopefully some warmer weather when we
gear up for some more representative performance testing.
Sergey Sirotkin: It was still quite a good, productive week. Of course, it
was not ideal in some aspects, but I believe we squeezed the best out of the
situation. It was nice to feel how the new car behaves on the track in
different conditions. We haven’t got the full picture of the car yet but I
think we can see some strong points and I believe we can make them even
stronger, as well as correct the weaker parts. Next week, we will have
better weather and a better chance to do this. Today, we collected as much
data and knowledge as possible about the car. I got some feeling for the car
with quite a good amount of consistent wet running, so a reasonable amount
of information about the car and myself.
Lance Stroll: My day was pretty good. I felt good in the car, the balance
feels good. It’s not easy to warm the tyres, it takes quite some time to get
them working but it shouldn’t be this cold during the year. My initial
thoughts are the car feels pretty good. We have a lot of work to do and a
lot to understand. The seat time is good, building confidence in the car.
It’s a new car, with new balance, a lot has changed. I did quite a few laps
this afternoon, that’s always positive in a first test. Next week, it’s
going to be a busier week than predicted because of the conditions this
week. It’s been a big off-season for everyone and the expectations are high
coming into this year. We definitely want to take a step forward. We know
the competition’s difficult from other teams but that doesn’t bring us down,
it should give us more motivation to go out and be the best we can be.
The FW41 will be back in action next week when pre-season testing resumes on
Tuesday 6 March, concluding on Friday 9 March. |