01/03/2007
NEWS STORY
Williams' Alexander Wurz topped the timesheets on the final day of testing at the Circuit de Catalunya.
With Nico Rosberg handing over to Kazuki Nakajima, today was Wurz' opportunity to shine, the German having topped the timesheets on the two previous days.
Wurz completed 59 laps on the way to posting a best time of 1:22.509, failing to beat his previous best time by 0.420s.
The Grove outfit has looked good this week. However, with all the major teams in action at Sakhir, it impossible to see where Williams stands in comparison, that will have to wait until Melbourne.
Nonetheless, Test Team Manager Dickie Stanford took the opportunity to than the team for its work over the winter: "We have now completed our winter test programme and thanks are due to the factory and the race & test team for all of the hard work that has been done over the last few months and has progressed the cars to this stage."
Adrian Sutil outpaced Christijan Albers as Spyker wrapped up its pre-season programme, the German posting his best time of the week as the Dutch team focussed on set-up, tyre testing and evaluating new development items including aero parts and control systems.
"We've now finished our pre-season testing programme," said Mike Gascoyne, "an excellent effort from all back at the factory and at the track.
"Although we know we are lacking some pace, I think we can be very proud of the improvements we've made," he added. "We now go to Melbourne in good shape aiming for a strong and consistent performance, so well done to all, including both our race drivers, for all their hard work over the testing period."
"We've come to the end of another productive week that concludes our relatively short winter test programme," added James Key. "Over the course of the three tests we've made good progress, the car has proved itself reliable and the drivers have been pleased with the overall results.
"Today we again did some long runs and tried to bring the tyres in more over the first few laps. It's still fairly difficult to predict the tyres in cooler conditions but we worked hard and we found some improvements. We had a few mechanical issues after lunch that caused some down time, but considering this is really the only halt in our programme since we started I think we can be proud of our achievements."
"We continued to work on improving performance over one lap and trying to make get the most out of the new tyres," said Sutil. "We found some small improvements towards the end of the day but we still have to work on getting a good balance. We have had three good days though and I've done a lot of mileage. I'm really looking forward to my first race weekend now."
"It was a reasonable day," added Albers, "and we found some small steps that helped the balance, so now it's full speed ahead to Australia. I want to thank the guys for all their hard work - they've put in so many hours to get the car ready and then go from Barcelona to Valencia and then back again - a big thumbs up for them."
The Dutch team now returns to its British HQ to finalise its preparations before leaving for Melbourne next week. On Tuesday 6 March a third chassis will be shaken down at Silverstone by test driver Markus Winkelhock.
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