Italian GP Practice

Posted on Friday 12 Sep 2008 and tagged with monza, practice.

After a deluge of rain this morning prematurely curtailed the first practice session for the Italian GP, the AT&T Williams team took to the drying Monza track after lunch to advance their preparations for tomorrow’s qualifying session. Both Nico Rosberg and Kazuki Nakajima had a constructive day in the car, with Nico in the top five times in both sessions and Kazuki looking to convert his set-up progression into lap times in tomorrow’s final practice.
 
Nico Rosberg:
I think we have started the weekend well. In the morning session in the wet, we were pretty quick and I felt very comfortable in the car, so even if it rains in the race, we can be pretty strong here. We weren’t too bad this afternoon in the drier conditions either, and despite the weather over the day, we managed to fit everything in, so practice was really well managed by the team. The car has good balance, but of course we still need to fine tune this a little bit. In terms of performance, we are definitely looking better than we have done of late. The Toyota engine is making a good contribution and because the car is performing well for this one-off low downforce race, we need to make the best of it.

Kazuki Nakajima:
The conditions have been quite tricky today, but thankfully we found time to do some dry running towards the end of the afternoon practice. The overall feeling from the car is not at all bad and the lap time was coming, but I never really had enough clear track to get my times down. Tomorrow’s last practice before qualifying will be important for me to continue the progress we made today.

Sam Michael, Technical Director:
It was a rain interrupted programme, but we managed to get through all of the work as most of it was covered at the test two weeks ago. This morning allowed us to generate some good wet running data and this afternoon we completed a compressed dry tyre programme. It’s too early to tell where anyone is because of the changeable weather conditions over the day, but from here we will now concentrate on generating some more performance for tomorrow’s qualifying.