Canadian GP: Free Practice

Posted on Friday 06 Jun 2008 and tagged with Canada.

The AT&T Williams team had a solid day of preparation ahead of tomorrow’s qualifying for the Canadian GP, finding a good set-up direction for the low downforce, high speed Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, the venue for Sunday’s race for the 30th time. Tomorrow the team will turn their attention in morning practice to single lap pace in preparation for the afternoon’s qualifying session.

Nico Rosberg:
We did a lot of set-up work today as the lower downforce level here takes some getting used to, but we have found a good direction with a definite improvement over the day. We also managed some good tyre tests too where we definitely learned something, so it’s been a good start to the weekend. We’re looking relatively competitive but we still need to do our homework tonight and we also have some interesting things to test tomorrow morning for qualifying. Overall I am confident.

Kazuki Nakajima:
I think today was a good day for us. I drove here last year, a clear advantage as I spent less time learning the track and more time getting straight into set-up work. The morning was more difficult with the damp weather conditions, but then in the afternoon we had a good session which allowed us to try a few more things on set-up and complete a more meaningful tyre comparison.

Sam Michael, Technical Director:
Morning practice started wet, but this didn’t really affect our programme, and we managed to achieve a good balance in intermediate conditions. After that we had a productive day without any reliability interruptions and worked through a programme of tyre compares and found some good set-up directions for the race. Now it is time to concentrate on qualifying to ensure we can find first lap pace.