12/05/2006
NEWS STORY
Sam Michael, Technical Director, WilliamsF1: "We had a productive day today in terms of working on set-up and tyre choice. The decision between the tyres will be difficult once again, which is a good sign because it means Bridgestone have brought two good tyres that have different characteristics, so we will look through the data tonight to see which will be best for the race here. On Alex's car, we perhaps went in the wrong direction on set-up this afternoon and although his long run pace was good, he would have looked even stronger. We had no other issues from a mechanical point of view and Mark and Nico managed some long runs, in fact Nico was on track for most of the session which will help with his preparation for qualifying tomorrow."
Alex Wurz: "We lost a bit of time in the morning session because it was wet, but in the end we managed to get through all our programme and concluded our tyre comparison. Now we have to sit down and analyse the data and decide how we want to play our strategy. We covered everything, so we have collected sufficient information, but nevertheless the tyre choice won't be easy as all options are open to us at the moment."
Nico Rosberg: "The track was quite different today from the last time we were here testing. As I didn't do any running in this morning's session when the track was much quicker, the car felt a bit strange at the beginning of the second session. After a few laps, when I got used to the track conditions and we had made some adjustments, I felt quite comfortable in the car. Towards the end of the afternoon we found a good pace, so all in all I am happy. It's been a productive day and I have also learned a couple of useful things for tomorrow and Sunday."
Mark Webber: "We got through our programme today and although we do plenty of mileage here in testing, it is still worth doing set-up work and we have produced some good information for tonight. The tyres seem to be working well and together with all the data we have, we will work on developing a good balance for the car for tomorrow."
Sean O'Mahony, Principal Engineer - F1 Race Engineering, Cosworth Ltd: "Both Mark and Nico carried over their 4 series engines from the Nurburgring for this event. Because we test here quite a lot we were not expecting any big driveability surprises. However the 4 series does have a different torque characteristic from our previous 2 and 3 series units. Happily the drivers didn't flag up any 4 series gremlins and the running was largely problem free from the engine side."
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