Williams Blog: Week 20

Posted on Monday 11 May 2009 and tagged with blog, team.

This week, Kazuki Nakajima's number one mechanic, James Broughton, walks us through his week...

The trucks left the factory for the Spanish Grand Prix last Sunday, so while we had to work the day before to prepare everything, it meant that we had Monday, a Bank Holiday in the UK, and Tuesday off. Good work if you can get it!

We caught a flight from Heathrow to Barcelona on Wednesday afternoon and arrived at our hotel, situated 32 kilometres from the track, at about 8pm. The weekend’s work then got underway on Thursday morning: we arrived at the track at 0830, where the cars were waiting for us in the garage, and job number one was to take the floor off Kazuki’s car and let the FIA unseal the engine.

Next we turned our attention to the aero upgrades scheduled for Kazuki’s car. We’d managed to add most of the new parts back at the factory, but we had to wait until arriving in Barcelona to finish the job because they weren’t ready in time. That done, we let the FIA scrutineer the car, before then firing it up to check all the systems.

There is always a constant stream of jobs to do on the Thursday of a GP and the next item on the job list was the mechanical set-up of the car. The engineers give me a list of set-up requirements at each Grand Prix, such as the ride height, springs and dampers, and we then put these on the car on Thursday afternoon. As a precaution, we then take the car to the weighbridge to check its legality – which was fine on this occasion – and so we were free to do the first pitstop practice of the weekend.

I’m the refueller at the pitstops and this first practice of the weekend was as much about testing the equipment as it was the people. The nozzle on the fuel hose is rebuilt between races and we used this practice to check that it is working okay. There was a problem with it and we took the decision to switch to a new nozzle for the remainder of the weekend.

We left the track at about 2000 on Thursday, before returning at 0800 the following morning. First job on Friday was to turn on the heaters that warm the engine and gearbox oil ahead of the first practice session, and we then did another practice pitstop using Nico’s car. The new refuelling nozzle worked fine, so we could rest easy and have breakfast.

The remainder of the weekend ran remarkably smoothly. There were no problems with the car in either of Friday’s two practice sessions, so we were able to get working on the new rear as soon as session two ended. It’s standard practice this year to use a new engine and gearbox for Saturday and Sunday, and it usually takes about four hours to install.

There were no further problems on Saturday and, mechanically, Kazuki’s car ran fine in the race as well. He got tangled up in the second-corner accident, of course, and that compromised his finishing position. But the reliability on the car was fine.

Now we can look ahead to Monaco, which has a very different feel to any other race. I enjoy it, but it can involve some very long hours!