Driver: Pastor Maldonado
Chassis / engine: FW34-03 / RS27- 5253/3
Location: Jerez de la Frontera 4.428km
Objectives: Tyre testing and component checks
Weather: Dry and sunny all day
Maximum air & track temps: 22ºC / 27ºC

With the start of the 2013 pre-season testing the Williams F1 team would join nine others at the Jerez circuit for four days of testing. Pastor Maldonado would conduct the driving for the first two days followed by Valtteri Bottas for the remaining. Despite not having their 2013 car running the 2012 model was still running with a vanity panel on its stepped front nose. It was also confirmed that they were running with most of their updated bodywork

Pastor would go out for his first run setting a 1m:22.568 after a six lap run. The McLaren of Button would cause the first red flag stopping out on the track. Pastor's next run would see him head out about thirty minutes later with his next run being eight laps with a best time of 1m:23.179. Fastest at this time was Rosberg with a 1m:20.846. Last year the quickest time set during practice was a 1m:19.670 set by Raikkonen. On his next series of runs Pastor would move up to second with a 1m:21.215 with Massa third, 1m:21.598. Pastor had completed twenty seven laps after two hours of the test session.

By early afternoon Pastor had completed sixty four laps with a best lap time of 1m:20.864. Of all the cars on the track Pastor had completed the largest number of laps by a considerable margin, most likely due to the fact that he was using the 2012 car. The quickest time at this point was Grosjean in his Lotus with a 1m:19.796. Towards the end of these laps Pastor would start high fuel runs with his times in the 1m:26 to 1m:29s region. Williams was also looking at getting a feel for the 2013 Pirelli's. At one time Pastor had also completed several practice starts at the end of the pit lane. Pastor had been using the harder of the 2013 tyres for these runs. The teams would break for lunch with Pastor fifth fastest.

It would not be until later in the afternoon that Pastor would return to the track, if only for a brief untimed lap. By the finish of the day Pastor would complete an encouraging eighty four laps finishing with a best time of 1m:20.864 to be ninth.

Mike Coughlan, Technical Director: Jerez is a unique circuit that we don’t race on during the season and it provides the perfect opportunity to do some final test and development work ahead of the FW35 launch. Today was a good day for us with Pastor completing 84 laps in the FW34. We concentrated on running some new systems in preparation for the FW35, as well as some planned set-up changes. We would be reluctant to do these over a normal race weekend as you lose too much track time making the changes, so it was ideal for us to get these into our programme today. It was also interesting to see the new Pirelli tyres in action and having the FW34 here helped us to really understand how the tyres are working.

Pastor Maldonado: We had no problems today and the car felt very consistent so we were able to learn a lot, which will be useful for the FW35 development. We planned to run the FW34 to enable us to have a reliable car to test the new tyres with and also try some different set-ups. It’s great to finally be back on track after what felt like a long winter and I’m confident we can achieve a lot this week.

The Williams F1 Team will be back on track tomorrow, Wednesday 6 February, with Pastor Maldonado continuing in the FW34 for the second day of the test.

DRIVER      	   TEAM 	    TIME      BEST / TOTAL
						     LAPS
1 J Button 	   McLaren Mercedes 1:18.861  32 / 37
2 M Webber 	   Red Bull Racing  1:19.709  59 / 73
3 R Grosjean 	   Lotus F1 Team    1:19.796  17 / 54
4 P Di Resta 	   Force India 	    1:20.343  32 / 89
5 D Ricciardo 	   Toro Rosso 	    1:20.401  32 / 70
6 F Massa 	   Ferrari 	    1:20.536  54 / 64
7 N Hulkenberg 	   Sauber F1 Team   1:20.699  68 / 79
8 N Rosberg 	   Mercedes 	    1:20.846  7 / 14
9 P Maldonado 	   Williams F1 Team 1:20.864  36 / 84
10 G Van Der Garde Caterham F1 Team 1:21.915  47 / 64
11 M Chilton 	   Marussia 	    1:24.176  28 / 29