Williams drivers braved the rain hit sessions at Silverstone ahead of the British Grand Prix as the worked on wet tyre runs and set-up work, it wasn’t to be the productive day they had hoped for after Bruno Senna aquaplaned off the circuit and in to the barriers.
Chief Operations Engineer Mark Gillan admitted that the team were working hard on wet weather set ups with the forecast looking bleak for qualifying. “The weather conditions were very poor today with constant rain throughout both sessions” said Gillan.
“As the forecast predicts both a wet qualifying and race we decided to run more than we would typically do in these challenging conditions in order to set the car up and get the drivers’ feedback ahead of the weekend. In FP2 Bruno aquaplaned off the circuit on full wet tyres damaging the front and rear wings and suspension. The mechanics are now busy rebuilding the car and we’ll be ready for FP3.”
Bruno Senna was optimistic despite his accident, “Unfortunately we didn’t have a very productive day in the end. The weather was poor weather with puddles on the track during second practice.
“On my second run, I aquaplaned on some deep water at the high speed Becketts section of the track and from that point was I a passenger until the car hit the wall. It was quite a heavy accident but I am ok. There is a lot of damage to the car but the Williams team will, I’m sure, do a great job of getting it back into shape for tomorrow.”
Pastor Maldonado added “There was a lot of aquaplaning, but the car feels quite good despite not getting the chance to run on a wet set-up. If it’s like this all weekend, we’ll just need to make some decisions tomorrow ahead of qualifying.”
Reserve driver Valtteri Bottas got chance to experience the weather first hand when he headed out on track for the morning session. “It was really wet this morning with a lot of water running across the track, meaning that the tyres were aquaplaning a little bit. The conditions were not easy but I think it was good overall. We got a little bit of direction with the car balance as it is looking like there will be rain all weekend. We made the most of the chance we had today by doing a few flying laps, but the weather was just getting worse.”
