Algarve Test Summary

Posted on Thursday 22 Jan 2009 and tagged with algarve-test.

The AT&T Williams team today concluded the inaugural test session of the Williams-Toyota FW31. The four day test was held for the first time at the Autodromo do Algarve in Portimao, Portugal, but has proved a frustrating time for the five teams present as running has been severely disrupted by torrential rain in the region.

The roll-out of the team's new car took place on Monday with test driver Nico Hulkenberg behind the wheel, who also today secured pole position for his debut GP2 race in Bahrain. Rain halted proceedings from the off with Nico only able to complete 28 laps before closing the day with the second quickest time of those running 2009-spec cars.

Nico Rosberg joined the team on Tuesday but didn't meet with any better weather. As the rain continued to pour, the team intermittently made it out on track to evaluate the 31's new aero and mechanical components and to prove reliability and judge performance. Although quickly resolved, a couple of minor mechanical issues combined with the bad weather only afforded Nico 31 laps of the Algarve track and some fairly irrelevant lap times.

Wednesday dawned with more favourable conditions and allowed the team an uninterrupted session of set-up and systems checks. Returning to the cockpit for a second day, Nico clocked a handy 143 laps (670km) - the most a Formula One car has ever recorded in one test session - and recorded the quickest time of all 2009 contenders present.

Unfortunately, the weather didn't hold for Thursday's final day of running and rendered the team completely immobile in the garage for all bar Kazuki's installation lap. With Kazuki Nakajima having taken over the controls for his first experience of his new wheels, he will be looking forward to the team's next test on 10 February to get to grips with the FW31.

Sam Michael, Technical Director, Williams F1:
“Testing today in Portugal was a complete washout with heavy rain all day. As such we had no further running with the FW31. In fact, the majority of the test was disrupted by rain; our only opportunity for consistent running was with Nico Rosberg on Wednesday. The time we did get on track was productive though and allowed the team to work through our scheduled systems checks and aero and mechanical tests with the new car. We're comfortable with the progress we made, but more track time would have been preferable. We will now return to the factory and prepare the test car for Jerez test in three weeks time.”

Nico Rosberg:
“Tuesday was almost too wet to get any valuable testing done, but my second day was on a dry track and it was very positive. I did the most kilometres ever recorded on one day with a Formula One car and that is really encouraging especially as it was with the new car. We didn’t have any problems that would have forced me to stop running so that’s a big compliment to the team. We worked through a good testing programme and have tried many fundamental set-up items as we try to learn more about the car. Performance-wise, this week was also encouraging, but it’s definitely too early to understand where we are relative to the other teams.”

Kazuki Nakajima:
“Because of the weather today, I only managed to do an installation lap. It was a real shame as I was really looking forward to testing the new car. I’ll now just have to wait until the next test in Jerez in February.”  

Nico Hulkenberg:
“Straight away the new car felt okay and I felt comfortable in it. Of course everyone wants to know how it compares to the 2008 car and what the impact of the rule changes are from a driver’s point of view. In truth, I cannot say too much after just a few laps, because the track is 100% new to me, I have never run in Portimão and also it was pretty wet, so I have no baseline for comparison – if we were running at Jerez or Barcelona in the dry, I could be a little more specific. But the important thing this week was to simply make sure we ran through all the checks of the basic systems on the car and confirm everything is working as it should. That was the case this week and we can be happy.”