31/03/2006
NEWS STORY
Sam Michael, Technical Director, WilliamsF1: "We had a good day today and worked through our programme with Alex, our main focus being tyre selection and we now have a good idea of which direction to follow. Bridgestone have a new tyre here and so far it is working well. Mark and Nico undertook some running mainly to familiarise themselves with the track and the conditions. We had some hydraulic problems today - while they are unrelated to the problems in Malaysia, it is something we will look into tonight."
Alex Wurz: "Conditions were not so easy today. It was cold, windy and it was difficult to know where to put the car on the circuit. Now we need to think about our tyre choice and the strategy for tomorrow and Sunday and we have some good ideas."
Mark Webber: "I had a little bit of a fright on my out lap as I thought there was a problem with the car, so I did the first third of the lap in first gear. But when everything got up to temperature, the engineers told me to push on and everything worked fine afterwards. As usual for a first run, we have a lot to do tonight on the balance, but it's good that we've got some runs in. We have beaten the weather and we have got some good data to go through from Alex's car as well."
Nico Rosberg: "This track is perhaps a little bit more difficult than I expected in terms of finding its particular characteristics in order to go quick. We also had some technical problems and I made some mistakes throughout the session which limited my ability to improve. So not so good today, but we still have some track time tomorrow. After my first runs, I think this is a nice track and I like it, but I just need some more laps to enjoy it properly."
Sean O'Mahony, Principal Engineer - F1 Race Engineering, Cosworth Ltd: "As at previous races, most of today's running was focused on the T-car with Alex Wurz. We took the opportunity to test some new engine calibrations developed at last week's test in Valencia. Mark and Nico completed some laps in the second session which enabled us to check for installation issues with their fresh engines. These engines have several updated features compared to the engines we ran in Malaysia which are aimed at improving reliability."