FP1 & FP2 Australian GP report: Williams

Rod Nelson, Chief Test & Support Engineer: We had a fairly straightforward day and managed to complete our planned programme. We went through some chassis and aero tests in the first session, and in the second session we looked at both long run pace and the performance of the soft tyre. We’ve been encouraged by the performance of the car in both short and long runs, so it was a constructive day for us and we have collected a lot of useful data to help in preparing the car for this weekend.

Valtteri Bottas: It was a good day for us today. We had no big issues with the car during the two sessions, so the team has done a great job in putting the car together as it has been fully stripped and analysed since the last test. We managed to finish our programme, completing different tests on the set-up for both short and long runs, so we have collected a lot of good data. We managed to improve the balance of the car from FP1 to FP2 and whilst it’s performing well, there is still work we can do to improve the car’s performance for qualifying tomorrow.

Felipe Massa: It was good to get a strong number of laps on the track today and a chance to understand how the car is behaving at this particular circuit. The car didn’t show any problems which is very positive as reliability will be important this weekend. There is a lot for us to work on tonight to improve the set-up of the car, but on the whole this has been a positive day for us and we head in to the weekend happy with how things have gone so far.