Barcelona Test One - Day Four

Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer: The start of our first proper pre-season testing with the FW42. The final few parts had arrived overnight, so we started the day with a complete car. The main focus of the programme has been data gathering particularly around aerodynamics with only a very modest amount of performance running for the drivers just to get some initial feedback. Neither driver was able to get enough laps to really find the limits of the car. The morning was a much better session for Robert in the sense of objectives achieved. Unfortunately, we had a small fault at the end of the morning session which took a long time to correct and so we were late out for the afternoon and had a mixture of other small problems and red flags. This meant we didn’t achieve all our intent with George. Nevertheless, both drivers have had their first look at the car with some interesting feedback already and we have some valuable data to take back to the factory. Our focus will now move to achieving a solid programme in the four days of testing next week. Thanks once again to all the team for the huge effort they have put in over the last week. It has been a very difficult process for everybody, but we are now moving forwards.



Robert Kubica: It was my first time out in the car, so it does not feel like day four of testing, but day one. This morning we spent the time gathering data, signing off tests for the engineering department and trying to put mileage on the car. I had 12 performance laps in the car, so it is too early to talk about feelings, those will become clearer next week. It would be better to have more time in the car as Australia is not far off, from both a driver and a car point of view. Everybody has their own job in the team and I must concentrate on mine to ensure that we are in the best possible shape for the first race.



George Russell: It was very important to get some mileage under our belt and get a feel for the car. It gives us a good understanding of where we are at, our limitations and what we need to work on next week. The car felt stable and I had a good feeling, but I am still yet to reach the full performance from the car. We are all excited to get back out on track on Tuesday but first we have a lot of work to do to make sure that the car is in the best possible state, that we have no issues and we can get the laps because we have some catching up to do.