Williams teammates Valtteri Bottas and Pastor Maldonado endured a frustrating Friday at Silverstone as rain limited their dry running in free practice. The first session was a washout but the teams did get to use slicks in FP2 with Bottas sixteenth overall and none the wiser as to whether the scheduled improvements have had the desired effect.
“Conditions were not ideal today, especially as we were trying to test new parts on the car. It’s the same for all teams, but I really feel for the fans as they didn’t see much running. We managed to test with both the prime and option tyres in the second practice session, so we’ll look at the data tonight and assess where we need to improve for the final practice session and qualifying tomorrow.”
Maldonado didn’t fare much better when it came to ultimate pace, finishing one place behind Bottas although he was quick to stress that the two cars were running different programmes today.
“I was running a different programme to Valtteri today, concentrating on mechanical work and tyres. We lost a lot of track time in the first session due to the weather, so we had a busy afternoon. I was also able to do a longer run towards the end as the track dried but we still have work to do to improve the performance for tomorrow.”
