The Williams F1 Team headed in to day 1 of the FIA Formula 1 World Champion in Canada with a plan to evaluate the aero along with general set-up work, the team showed good pace despite a few technical issues.
Felipe Massa was happy with his day but did lose some time in the morning session with ERS cooling problems that would leave him to finish the opening session in seventeenth. The afternoon session faired better for the Brazilian as he finished in sixth place.
“It was a good Friday” said Massa. “Unfortunately I lost some laps this morning, but in the afternoon we were able to run a lot to understand the set-up, the tyres and the long runs.
“I was happy with the balance today. I hope we can have a very competitive car on this track and I hope we can fight with Red Bull and Ferrari, which is never easy” he added.
Team-mate Valtteri Bottas finished both sessions in the top 10 and showed some promising pace.
“It was more or less what we expected” said the Finn. “We got some good results from the changes we made from the last race, so it was nice to see some progress. It seems like everyone is still struggling with tyre warm-up with the prime, but the option felt a lot better. I still think we can improve our overall performance from today.
“I didn’t have the perfect lap yet with the supersoft, so I think there’s a little bit more to come.”
Head of Performance Engineering Rob Smedley was happy with a “standard Friday” and confident with the outcome of the practice sessions.
“We had a few dramas with brake temperatures” said Smedley, “I don’t think any team is different, and Felipe lost some time with the ERS cooling system failure in the first session. We recovered well with good teamwork and operations to resolve the issues we had with brakes and tyre warm-up, and had a very good session in FP2.
“We tested all the aerodynamic pieces we brought here and they seem to be working very well. We seem to have found a reasonable balance with tyre warm-up and degradation. There is still a lot to do to improve tyre warm-up and rear graining for the race.”
