© Charles Coates/Williams F1
Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering has stated that the team are happy with the balance of their car after the first day of running at Sochi.
Bottas was fifth quickest whilst Massa was seventh in the standings during second practice. Smedley admits they still have to find some performance however is happy with the initial performance from his cars.
”This is an interesting circuit and we have had a positive practice today. It’s very much a low-speed track, with no real high-speed corners and our primary focus was to get the set-up of the cars right and to get the drivers honed in to the right trajectory. We still have a bit more to find on this but that was always going to be the case given this is a new circuit. The car balance is looking good for the first day and the car performance has looked good on both low and high fuel runs.
Like a lot of drivers, Smedley stated the compounds were ”too hard” for everyone but the team needs to analyse what the best strategy would be come race day.
”Valtteri had a problem with his tyre blankets this morning which hindered his run time in FP1 but this didn’t affect the overall run programme in the end. The compounds are looking very hard for this track but this is the same for everyone and we need to analyse how this will affect the race weekend. The tyre performance might change quickly so we need to be open-minded with our strategy and react to this when needed.”
Felipe Massa was also happy with the balance of the FW36 and was satisfied with the days running.
”I’m pretty happy with the cars balance and it’s performing consistently so overall I’m happy with our days running.”
Valtteri Bottas commented on the challenge the Sochi circuit provides and admitted it was harder than he expected.
”I’m positively surprised by the track as it’s more challenging than I expected with quite a few technical sections, especially the final sector and I found it enjoyable to drive.”
