Indian GP: Williams F1 Grand Prix Preview

Mark Gillan, Chief Operations Engineer:
On the back of a disappointing result in Korea the team have worked extremely hard to address the balance inconsistencies that affected both cars. We believe that we have found a solution and look forward to testing and optimising around the updated car. The weather forecast in Delhi is good with predicted dry running throughout the weekend in reasonably high track temperatures and, as ever, the aim is to keep both the Pirelli hard and soft tyres within their optimal working window throughout the weekend.

Bruno Senna:
I’m looking forward to this weekend because India has a different atmosphere to many other Grand Prix and it’s always a unique place to visit. As a new track the surface is very smooth and the layout is fast and flows well with some high speed corners which will suit our car. We should therefore be looking to improve on our performance in Korea.

Pastor Maldonado:
India is enjoyable because it’s so different and the track is one of my favourites. It’s still a new track but it has a good combination of medium and high speed corners, chicanes and good changes in direction. Coming to the final few races and making the most of our cars potential is going to be important, so hopefully we can score points here and put ourselves in a strong position for the final three races.

Rémi Taffin, Head of Renault Sport F1 Track Operations:
The first part of the track is mainly composed of straights, including an awesome 1.12km straight, the longest on the calendar. Unusually this straight dips in the middle. The second part of the track is a lot more intricate, with all the corners linking together, so driveability will be very important. The challenge will be getting the right balance between the responsiveness needed for the off-camber turns, such as the chicane at turns 13 and 14, and longer corners such as the radial turn 10, which need a steady application of power. At the start of the weekend dirt on the racing line and pollution within the atmosphere can have a detrimental effect on air filter performance, so this will need careful monitoring during P1 and P2.

Paul Hembery, Pirelli Motorsport Director:
For the Indian Grand Prix, we’ve nominated the P Zero Silver hard tyres and P Zero Yellow soft tyres, as we did in 2011. Along with everybody else though, this time we benefit from much greater knowledge of the track and the conditions so we can afford to be a little less conservative. It’s quite a demanding circuit for the tyres due to high ambient temperatures, some fast corners and notable elevation changes, as well as a long straight.

All these factors contribute to putting plenty of energy through the rubber. We are also expecting to see a considerable degree of track evolution over the course of the weekend. Generally speaking, our tyre compounds are softer this year but we should still definitely see a performance gap between the two nominations selected for India, which will open up a number of different opportunities for strategy. Coupled with the wide and open track layout, this means that there is plenty of potential for overtaking as well.

Race Data
Friday:
Practice 1: 10:00 - 11:30
Practice 2: 14:00 - 15:30
Saturday:
Practice 3: 11:00 - 12:00
Qualifying: 14:00 – 15:00
Sunday: Race: 15:00