20/02/2007
NEWS STORY
Williams continues to set the pace at Valencia, as Nico Rosberg joined Alexander Wurz for the second day of testing at the Spanish track.
Between them the Grove team's driver completed 175 laps, whilst continuing to set a respectable pace.
"It was a cooler day in Valencia today," said Test Team Manager Dickie Stanford, "which saw Nico carry out pit-stop practices in the morning while Alex focussed on set-up work. The pair swapped roles in the afternoon, with Alex undertaking the practice pit-stops with our race team mechanics.
Tomorrow, Narain Karthikeyan will replace Alex and join Nico to go through set-up work and hopefully carry out some race distances."
Spyker had three drivers on duty, with Adrian Sutil in one car and Fairuz Fauzy and Christijan Albers sharing the other, the three completing 239 laps in total. The Dutch team focussed on testing control systems and tyres, practising pit stops and conducting race simulation work.
"Today was another productive day," said Mike Gascoyne. "We covered a lot of laps with no mechanical issues. In the morning Fairuz did a very good job to get up to the required mileage to qualify for a Superlicence - he made no mistakes and was consistent throughout his runs. Christijan took over the car at lunch to complete set up work plus evaluate the new Bridgestone Potenza tyres. Additionally, we looked at our performance over one lap and conducted a race simulation with Adrian Sutil. In the longer runs we know the car is consistent, but we are struggling to make the tyres work on first lap. We'll continue to work on this tomorrow."
"I was very pleased, especially as I didn't make any big mistakes," said Fauzy. "The most important thing today was to get the licence, but from now on we can start to try different things."
"I did over 30 laps and got some useful information on the performance of the car," added Albers. "Everything will be fresh tomorrow so hopefully we will find some more performance. We know we need to improve in some areas, so we'll continue to work and find the best set-up for this track."
"It was a tough day with a lot of laps," said Sutil. "This morning we tried out many things, including different diff settings and set ups and also did some tyre testing. This afternoon I did some work over one lap and a race distance. We know we have to improve over one lap but I was pleased with the consistent lap times over the longer runs."