Williams Martini Racing: Barcelona Test Three – Day One

Driver Alex Lynn was on hand to pilot the FW38-01 / PU106C Hybrid at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya Tuesday in testing. The weather was warm and dry with maximum air and track temps of 23ºC / 39ºC.

Rod Nelson, Chief Test & Support Engineer: It was a very successful day. We’ve been doing a lot of aero testing today on development items. We also went through a programme looking at some Monaco set-up alternatives. It was a very interesting day for us with plenty of data to look through, and we got through our entire planned programme. It was good to have Alex back in the car today. He drove the FW37 last year, so it is quite interesting to hear his view of where we’re going with the FW38. It is quite a different beast, and race drivers don’t always notice the difference because they drive it every week and changes tend to be fairly marginal. For him, he is looking back several months. It is interesting to talk to him about it and get a different point of view. He did a great job for us, it was a very clean day to complete our programme. Overall, I’m feeling very positive, and now we’re looking forward to getting Felipe in the car tomorrow to carry on with the work that Alex started today.
 
Alex Lynn: I think we had a really positive day. We’ve run through everything, and probably more than we ever anticipated on the programme. We’ve had a lot of good running for the team in terms of the next few races, and got some good information. We did some good work on the medium tyre, and in the afternoon it was more Monaco based performance work.
 
The Williams Mercedes FW38 will be back on track tomorrow for day two of the test with Felipe Massa at the wheel.