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Driver Rubens
Barrichello
Chassis / engine FW33-01 / CA320
Location Circuito de la Comunidad Valenciana Ricardo Tormo. 4.005km
Objectives Initial systems, performance and reliability checks with the FW33
Weather Cold with some cloud in the morning, bright in the afternoon
Air & track temps 18ºC / 20ºC
The AT&T
Williams team would see Rubens Barrichello complete seventy seven laps of
the Valencia circuit, setting the eleventh fastest time of the day, 3.566
seconds off pace-setter Sebastian Vettel's Red Bull.
Despite this
Rubens would view his first day behind the wheel of the new FW33 as
"positive" even though it was difficult to judge the prospects for the 2011
Williams in terms of pace. His day was spent working through the new systems
on the car, including the adjustable rear wing and the new KERS.
Rubens was to lose track time as a result of a problem with the KERS and a
motor generator unit in the system. The team was confident that this issue
can be easily fixed for the second day of testing.
"We learned a lot," said Barrichello. "The FW33 is a different car and it
needs a different setup and a lot of understanding so today I was just sent
out every time to cover miles. The balance of the car wasn't really good,
but it's going to be very difficult to have a car that feels good with the
amount of fuel that we were running."
He added that he was impressed with the design of the FW33, which features a
very tightly-packaged gearbox that allows a very clean airflow to the lower
section of the rear wing.
"The car is beautiful," said Barrichello. "The back end of the car is done
fantastically. Right now, if you look at the times you would say it is 'too
bad' but I don't think we can look into that because there is too big a
difference of fuel load. I'm not concerned. "There is more than three
seconds between low fuel and what we are running. I would say that, from
what we saw today, we can't compare it to the fastest times.
"Last year, I qualified outside the top 10 for the first race but I was, at
one point, on the top of the timesheets in one of the tests. That shows how
much the fuel can do. I just have to concentrate on the balance and see what
it brings."
In an official
press release Sam Michael and Rubens had these further comments.
Sam Michael, Technical Director: It’s been a good day in terms of
getting through things. We had a problem with KERS this morning so we didn’t
use it in the afternoon. Besides that, everything else on the car is working
and we didn’t have any problems with temperatures, pressures and all the
systems are working fine. We now plan to do more mileage and setup work
tomorrow. The moveable rear wing also worked fine today so all in all a
pretty good first day.
Rubens Barrichello: I couldn’t wait to get back in the car.
Unfortunately we lost a lot of time in the morning so we were trying to play
catch up in the afternoon. We did some good laps and some long runs in the
car. It is too early to say how we are performing but we will now spend time
to try and understand the car a little better.
AT&T Williams will be back on track tomorrow, Wednesday 2 February, with
Rubens Barrichello driving in the morning session and Pastor Maldonado
driving the afternoon session.
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