(Williams Martini Racing Team)
The Williams Martini Racing Team recovered from a very difficult start to their Abu Dhabi Grand Prix weekend as they both Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa suffered bodywork failures which meant that the pair had to sit out the majority of the opening session.
In the second session, the pair completed their programme as Valtteri Bottas finished the second session in fifth place finishing ahead of Fernando Alonso who failed to set a time in the second session while he was just behind the Infiniti Red Bull Racing car of Sebastian Vettel who is he is hoping to finish ahead of in the championship for this season.
Speaking following today's running, Valtteri Bottas stated:
'After some issues in FP1 we managed to make up some lost time in FP2. In the second session everything worked well, but there is still some work to do tomorrow with regards to the balance of the car. In some corners I lose the front and in others, the rear, so I want to get that sorted early. There is time, so we are under no pressure, and we still have some tuning to go which will add performance.'
Felipe Massa did a great job in the second session as the Brazilian finished the second session in 10th place. Speaking following the session, Massa stated:
'I wouldn’t say I had a perfect day, but I know the areas that I need to improve and how I will do this, so I am not worried. The first session wasn’t too much of an issue, luckily I saw the problem early, and so the bodywork didn’t come off. The afternoon was better, we made some progress but I still struggled on the new tyres. The Mercedes are still looking quick, but we will keep working to close the gap.'
The Williams Martini Racing Team head into this weekend's season finale in Abu Dhabi in third place in the championship, 40 points ahead of the Ferrari F1 team and with double points on offer on Sunday the Grove based outfit look set to finish the season in third place. Speaking following Friday's running, Williams Martini Racing Tram's Head of Performance Engineering Rob Smedley stated:
'We had some issues with the bodywork during first practice, but the team did a really good job to correct that and fix the problem ready for FP2. It was a fairly standard second session and the car had some good pace.
We are looking for a little more consistency on the long runs, but other than that we are happy with the progress we have made. The second session was a lot more representative of the race and qualifying in terms of the weather and time of day, so it is pleasing that we completed our programme then.'
© Ben Johnston 2014
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