Sunday 2 February 2014

Massa happy with initial progress of the FW36

(Williams F1 Team via Twitter)

Felipe Massa had his first taste of the new the Williams FW36 this week after taking over testing duties from team mate Valtteri Bottas on Thursday, the Brazilian did a great job to finish the day in 2nd place just behind McLaren's Kevin Magnussen he went one better on Friday and topped the timesheets completing 86 laps. He fastest time was 1m 28.229.

The Grove based team made a late start to testing on Tuesday when Valtteri Bottas took the car out for the first time on Tuesday afternoon and despite only completing seven laps the Finn still managed to finish the day in third place just behind Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton.

On Wednesday Bottas once again finished in third place. The new car is powered by the Mercedes 1.6 litre V6 turbocharged power unit.

Massa joined the Williams F1 Team following seven season's with Ferrari and came close to winning the 2008 F1 drivers championship. So it is great to see him leading the Williams F1 Team this season and with a new Mercedes power unit in the back of the FW36 the Grove outfit are hoping that they will   be in a position to challenge for points on a regular basis this season following an extremely disappointing season last year.

Over the course of the four test in Jerez the team covered a total of 175 laps and suffered very few technical issues with their new car. Massa was extremely happy to top the timesheets on Friday and he said that he was happy with the first day in the car and the first impressions of the team. The Brazilian went on to say that there is still an awful lot of work to do and many long hours of work ahead before the first race in Melbourne, Australia.

However, from the initial test this week the Grove based team can be extremely satisfied with how their new car ran. The real challenge will come during the next test in Bahrain from 19th - 22nd February as temperatures are expected to be an awful lot higher then they were in Jerez this week which will undoubtedly have an effect on how the new cars perform on track.

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