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Driver Pastor
Maldonado
Chassis / engine FW34-02 / RS27-5281/1
Location Circuit de Catalunya, Barcelona 4.655km
Objectives Aero correlation tests and set-up work
Weather Dry and sunny all day
Ambient & track temps 23ºC / 27ºC
The final pre-season test would get underway, again at the Circuit de
Catalunya and for the Williams F1 team it would be Pastor
Maldonado who would be driving. Pastor would complete his installation lap
and after one hour of the day completed Pastor had still
only completed this one lap. It would take until 10:30 before Pastor would
commence a series of single laps, each time returning to
the pit lane. Pastor had yet to really get up to speed having pitted. It
would not be until 11:00 that he would come out and set a
1m:25.829, pitting again after just four laps. The team would be carrying
out testing on new components including a front wing
which had new elements as well as a new lower element profile.
After a long forty minute break Pastor would return to the track where he
would set his quickest time with a 1m:25.857, running on
medium tyres. He would complete another three laps before pitting again just
before 12:00. Another ten minute break and Pastor
would again do a short series of four laps, all in the 1m:28s. Again after
another break he would return to the track to complete
another four laps, this time he times would be in the 1m:27s. He would pit
again just before 1PM. At this time it was Button who
was fastest with a 1m:23.510, with Pastor 2.077 seconds behind. Pastor had
completed thirty seven laps.
The next three days of testing will see Both Pastor and Bruno running on
Friday, Bruno on Saturday, and both drivers on the final
day. With the lunch time break Pastor would be tenth. After the break it
would take around half an hour before Pastor would return
to the track, running on the medium tyre. He would complete two slow laps
before pitting again. He would return ten minutes later
with his first lap a 1m:28.649, this time running on the soft tyre. Pastor
would complete nine laps before pitting with his times
ranging from the 1m:28s to the and 1m:30s. At this time Pastor had complete
fifty two laps. Over an hour had passed and still
Pastor had yet to return to the track. With only an hour remaining it would
be unlikely that Pastor would be able to add any
significant number of laps to his total.
Pastor would
only complete another handful of laps in that day that saw him limited in
his track time due to a few issues which had yet to be confirmed.
Mark Gillan, Chief Operations Engineer: We tested part of our first race
update package today, and in particular the new front
wing. We then tested a number of interesting exploratory mechanical set-ups
to investigate potential development directions for the
forthcoming races. During the day, we encountered a couple of issues which
limited our running and which we are currently
investigating.
Pastor Maldonado: We didn’t complete as much running as we would have liked
today, but we still gathered some good data. This
morning we ran our new front wing so we will analyse the results from our
aero runs this evening. We completed a few longer runs
during the afternoon as we investigated a number of set-up directions.
The Williams F1 Team will be back on track tomorrow, Friday 2 March, with
Pastor Maldonado driving in the morning session and Bruno
Senna driving the afternoon session for the second day of the test. |
