Williams F1 Barcelona Test Two – Day One

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: Warm and dry
Temperatures (min-max): Air 16-20ºC / Track 20-28ºC 

Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer: It’s great to come here to some more normal weather in the second week of testing. We were running Sergey in the morning and Lance in the afternoon. Sergey had a bit of a slow start because we had a small problem with a bit of bodywork which lost us an hour to change some parts. Sergey managed some reasonable runs but with the warmer temperature, it’s a bit windier this week so we had some tricky balance issues which we were not able to address during the morning session. Lance took the car in the afternoon with the objective to complete a race distance, which he did, taking it right to the flag. Lance’s long run also included our first look at the hypersoft tyre. At the end, we also completed the FIA restart tests. In summary, we’re very happy to cover a lot of laps today, including our first race distance with the FW41 without incident.

Sergey Sirotkin: We had warmer temperatures today but they were tricky conditions. It looked like a nice day but it was not so easy testing-wise. We had a couple of little issues throughout the morning so it was not ideal, but for sure it was still better than last week and I still learnt something from it. We also got some data which will help us tomorrow with the stuff we’re doing. Today was not ideal, but it is how it is.

Lance Stroll: It was just good to do some kilometres in the car. I have the first race distance of the year under my belt now and it was positive. I believe we have made a step forward compared to where we were last year with just the general feeling and grip level. I don’t know where we will be compared to everyone else, but compared to last year’s car, it definitely feels quite a bit better. So far, so good and we just need more seat time, quali sims, race sims and I believe we will be in a good place when we get our programme done and are heading into Melbourne. I believe we can still improve a little bit everywhere. There is still so much we haven’t tried on the car yet. In a Formula One car you have so many set ups and it takes two weeks to get everything out of the way. I believe there are still little things we can do and again, it was a race sim so I can’t compare that to what we were doing last week on lower fuel. There is still a lot to learn but race simulation-wise, I believe we are in a good place. But also, definitely these conditions are not ideal, as this smooth surface in Barcelona doesn’t give much graining to the tyres, so I am sure it will be very different when we show up in Australia.