Barcelona Test Summary

Posted on Thursday 21 Feb 2008 and tagged with barcelona, testing.

The AT&T Williams team concluded the three day Barcelona test on a positive note today as Kazuki Nakajima finished the day's running by topping the timesheets.

Nico Rosberg, Kazuki Nakajima and Nico Hulkenberg were all on duty for the team, with the two Nicos venturing out on a damp, but drying, track this morning to cover long runs and complete chassis set-up work. Kazuki took over the reins from Hulkenberg in the afternoon to get in some useful dry running.

The team remain in Barcelona for the final pre-season test next week.

Test Times:
K Nakajima: 1:22.153 (32 laps) 1st
N Rosberg: 1:22.248 (109 laps) 5th
N Hulkenberg: 1:24.222 (54 laps) 13th

Sam Michael, Technical Director:
This week we continued our winter test programme at the Barcelona circuit. Although the first two days were wet, the final day was predominantly dry and that allowed us to work on chassis set-up. All three drivers were on hand and the mileage they covered was important for us to get race signoff before the Australian Grand Prix.

Nico Rosberg:
We’ve had plenty of running in the wet this week and we looked pretty good, which was positive. It wasn’t that easy to drive in the conditions, it’s hard to keep the tyres in the working window, especially without traction control, so you’re always quite on the limit. The last day was dry and so we managed to cover a lot of laps with no problems at all. Over the three days, we got some important reliability issues sorted out. We seem to be progressing well with the new car and I am happy with the improvements we’re making.

Kazuki Nakajima:
Initially it was a bit of a difficult test because of the weather but it was good for me to get some experience in wet conditions. The car is feeling good, but we couldn’t do as much work with it as we wanted to because of the bad weather. It was still a good week for us though overall.