Pastor Maldonado completed 121 laps on the fourth and final day of this pre-season test in Barcelona, although his Williams team did have to disable KERS on the FW33 today.
The Venezuelan driver was happy with his day’s efforts, and had some very positive comments about the car.
“We did 121 laps so it's been a great day,” he said. “We tried lots of things on the car this morning and this afternoon we did a race simulation. The car felt great. We need to work to understand a little bit more about the balance on the longer runs but I am happy as the car is getting better each time we go out.”
Technical director Sam Michael explained the reason for not using KERS all day and explained the team’s approach to the final day of this test.
“It has been another productive day but it certainly didn’t start out like that!” he exclaimed. “We had a problem with the KERS cooling system just before the session opened, so we had to disable KERS for the day.
“Pastor then spent the morning doing some mapping runs for Cosworth and running some new exhaust components for aero to check temperatures for the last test aero upgrade that is coming – all of that worked okay.
“In the afternoon we completed a race simulation with no problems. Overall it has been a productive test although we still have some reliability issues to work on.”
The final winter test will now be held back at the Circuit de Catalunya from 8-11 March following the cancellation of the Bahrain Grand Prix. Williams will bring their first race upgrade package to this session.
The team will unveil its 2011 racing livery at 11:00 GMT this Thursday at an event to be streamed online via its website: www.attwilliams.com.
