Williams Martini Racing rolled out a new front and rear wing – both radical – as part of its test program Tuesday at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
Test driver Alex Llynn had the opportunity for his first day in the FW38 Mercedes chassis and sample it.
Rod Nelson, Chief Test & Support Engineer, described the day of running: “It was a very successful day. We’ve been doing a lot of aero testing today on development items. We also went through a program looking at some Monaco set-up alternatives. It was a very interesting data for us with plenty of data to look through and we got through the entire program.
“It was good to have Alex back in the car today. He obviously drove the FW37 last year, so it is quite interesting to hear his view of where we’re going with the FW38. It is quite a different beast and race drivers don’t always notice the difference because they drive it every week and changes tend to be fairly marginal.
“For him, he is looking back several months. It is interesting to talk to him about it and get a different point of view. He did a great job for us, it was a very clean day and we got through the whole program. So overall, I’m very positive and now we’re looking forward to getting Felipe in the car tomorrow and carrying on with the work that Alex started today.”
Lynn added, “I think we had a really positive day. We’ve run through everything and probably more than we ever anticipated on the program. We’ve had a lot of good running for the team in terms of the next few races, and got some good information. We did some good work on the medium tire, and in the afternoon it was more Monaco based performance work and patterning through the laps.”
