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The Williams F1 Team finished fifth (Pastor) and eighth (Bruno) in the Abu
Dhabi Grand Prix - the team's biggest points haul in the last few races –
but it still came away from Yas Marina knowing there could have been more.
Chief Operations Engineer Mark Gillan reflects on what was an exciting
weekend of racing.
Q: Describe your emotions after the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix: are you pleased
to have scored 14 points, or disappointed not to have scored more?
MG: To be honest both. We are delighted to get 14 points and have both cars
home in the points, but also equally frustrated as without the KERS failure,
which occurred after the first safety car period, Pastor could have come
home with much more and a podium was certainly achievable.
Q: Pastor and Bruno were 1-2 through the speed trap in both qualifying
and the race. Did that set-up choice cost them one-lap performance on
Saturday afternoon?
MG: No, we tried higher downforce levels but felt that our choice was
optimal for the race without compromising qualifying. Pastor's fourth
quickest laptime in qualifying, coupled with our strong long run pace tends
to support that view. The straight-line speed advantage also helped both
drivers defend and attack throughout the race, although without KERS Pastor
was primarily in defence mode.
Q: Pastor only just made it into Q3 in qualifying, yet he went on to
start the race from P3. What did you change on his car to improve his
performance so dramatically?
MG: Pastor was very happy with the car all weekend. The Q2 time which got
him through to Q3 was actually set on a used set of options, so when he got
his new option run 'hooked-up' in Q3 it wasn't surprising that he was quite
a bit quicker.
Q: When were you first aware of Pastor's KERS failure in the race, and
what did it cost him in terms of lap time?
MG: When you are running in clean air and without anyone trying to overtake
you loosing KERS is typically a few tenths penalty in laptime. However
without KERS you are very vulnerable to being overtaken by someone with both
DRS and KERS, so Pastor was having to defend his position hard and this was
costing him a lot of lap time.
Q: Bruno was involved in a collision with Nico Hulkenberg at Turn 1. How
much damage was his car carrying for the remainder of the race?
MG: The left hand side of Bruno's car took a reasonably hard impact, which
damaged a number of our sensors and also the bodywork. The car stood up well
to the impact and Bruno's pace was very good, although we had less live
telemetry data on which to monitor the car's performance during the race.
Q: How would you sum up tyre wear during the race? Could Pirelli have
been more aggressive with their choice of tyre compounds at Yas Marina?
MG: Tyre wear was under control and yes, in hindsight, Pirelli could
probably have been a bit more aggressive in their compound choice.
Q: The all-new Circuit of the Americas is the next venue on the calendar.
Having never visited the track before, how much of a step into the unknown
is this race going to be?
MG: In terms of up front information, it will be a similar experience to
what we had going to Delhi last year. Despite a relative lack of data, with
the fidelity of the latest simulator tools we expect to get very close in
our modelling to a decent start set-up. |
Drivers
1 S Vettel 255
2 F Alonso 245
3 K Raikkonen 198
4 M Webber 167
5 L Hamilton 165
6 J Button 153
7 F Massa 95
8 N Rosberg 93
9 R Grosjean 90
10 S Perez 66 |
Constructors
1 Red Bull Racing-Renault 422
2 Ferrari 340
3 McLaren-Mercedes 318
4 Lotus-Renault 288
5 Mercedes 136
6 Sauber Ferrari 124
7 Force India-Mercedes 95
8 Williams-Renault 73
9 STR-Ferrari 22
10 Caterham-Renault 0 |
