Chief Technical Officer with ROKiT Williams Racing, Paddy Lowe, has expressed his disappointment at what the team was able to achieve during the last day of the first week of pre-season testing in Spain.
The Grove-based outfit have had a difficult start to the season, after missing out on two and a half days of testing, with driver Robert Kubica only able to complete a total of 48 laps during his morning run on Thursday.
“The start of our first proper pre-season test with the FW42. The final few parts had arrived overnight, so we started the day with a complete car,” said Lowe.
He said that the team’s main focus for the test was to collect aerodynamic data, with the drivers doing a limited number of hot laps to gain some initial feedback on development.
“The main focus of the programme has been data gathering particularly around aerodynamics with only a very modest amount of performance running for the drivers just to get some initial feedback.”
Lowe said they were not able to achieve what they had planned to with either Kubica or George Russell, due to a combination of issues with the car and red flags due to incidents.
“Neither driver was able to get enough laps to really find the limits of the car. The morning was a much better session for Robert in the sense of objectives achieved.
“Unfortunately, we had a small fault at the end of the morning session which took a long time to correct and so we were late for the afternoon and had a mixture of other small problems and red flags. This means we didn’t achieve all our intent with George.”
Despite this, Lowe said the team will now push forward and turn their attention to having a solid final week of testing.
“Our focus will now move to achieving a solid programme in the four days of testing next week. Thanks once again to all the team for the huge effort they have put in over the last week.
“It has been a very difficult process for everybody, but we are now moving forwards.”
