Williams spent their Friday in Korea giving their drivers a chance to become familiar with the new Yeongam circuit while completing set-up work and tyre evaluations.
Rubens Barrichello and Nico Hulkenberg finished the day down in thirteenth and sixteenth respectively. Director of Engineering Patrick Head said that tyre graining had been an issue for all of the teams, but added that he would like to see an improvement in FW32’s performance as the weekend progresses.
“It was very interesting to see the track develop and the way both tyres are behaving,” he said. “I think everyone is experiencing graining on the option tyre, so that may cause some different race strategies. For us, we had a normal Friday, although we'd be happier if our lap times were a bit quicker, but we think we know where that is going to come from.”
Barrichello thinks that his thirteenth position doesn’t tell the whole story of the team’s competitiveness this weekend, and has no complaints about how Friday went.
“We had a reasonable day,” said the Brazilian. “The track is getting better all the time. We started running on a high fuel load fairly early on, so I don't think that where we ended today's running is entirely reflective.”
Hulkenberg was positive about the track, and explained his lack of performance in the afternoon session was down to the changes in his car set-up. In the morning session the German was ninth fastest, one place higher than Barrichello.
“The track is pretty nice, I like driving here,” he said. “We had a good first session this morning but we made some changes to the set-up for the afternoon which didn't take us forward. The car felt quite different and I struggled to get the lap time out of it. We were looking competitive all morning though so we'll go back to what we had originally and improve tomorrow.”
