Friday: Williams starts his weekend on a good note

Williams hopes to get back into the points at the Singapore Grand Prix, and things seem to be looking up for the Grove team. On this very technical track, which highlights the qualities of the driver, the car, and especially the chassis with its numerous curbs and chicanes, the FW31 is regaining its form.

Slightly struggling in the first free practice session with the track still very dusty, Nico Rosberg clocked an impressive seventh time in the second session, improving his time by a full second. His teammate, Kazuki Nakajima, did not improve his time between the two sessions and is 7 tenths behind his teammate at the end of the evening. Nakajima is under pressure and will need to do better as his place in F1 is at stake.

Nico Rosberg – 11th and 7th:

The first session started quite poorly but we made some changes and began to find some direction. Although we knew we would be back in terms of speed here, towards the end of the day, we conducted a good tire test and found a bit more performance through some clever setup changes, so I’m happy with this positive day. At the end of the second session, I slightly touched the wall but didn’t damage the car. I only scratched the front wing, but as Frank Williams says: “If you’re not touching the walls, you’re not going fast enough!”

Kazuki Nakajima – 10th and 15th:

« It’s physically very tough here and I had two difficult sessions. However, I believe I have prepared well and the conditions shouldn’t be too much of a problem. We still have a bit of work to do on the tires, but our pace on the long stints was positive today and we will continue our progress tomorrow.

Patrick Head – Technical Director:

« We did our homework with the tires today, and both types seem to perform well on this track, perhaps the harder one is a bit more stable. We also experimented with some different mechanical setups on the car and we roughly know what we’re going to do on Sunday. Tomorrow we’ll focus on speed for qualifying. The car behaves as we expected but it’s too early to say where we stand. We’ll have a better idea tomorrow. »