Abu Dhabi Grand Prix 2013 – Practice

Xevi Pujolar, Chief Race Engineer: We ran both cars on different aero configurations today, with Pastor running a development package for next year and Valtteri continuing with our standard package. The track was very slippery to start and both cars were struggling with overall grip. In FP2 Pastor continued with some aero comparisons, as well as trying some mechanical tests aimed at getting more grip on the first lap of each run. Valtteri concentrated on short and long runs comparing the two compounds of tyre, with conditions in FP2 more representative of what we will see in the race. The track conditions were improving throughout the day with the soft option tyre more susceptible to graining and the medium looking more consistent. Overall, Pastor’s development package showed more positive results, so we will be fitting this across both cars for tomorrow.

Pastor Maldonado: It was a good day for us today. We completed our planned programme and the car felt quicker with the new updates. There are still some balance issues we need to work on, but overall there seems to be more potential in this package. We now need to check the data and thoroughly analyse today’s sessions to make further progress tomorrow, but I think we can find a bit more speed than we had today.

Valtteri Bottas: We tried some interesting things on Pastor’s car today with a view to 2014 and we saw some interesting results and noticeable differences in the way the car performed. We will have a busy night tonight analysing the data we have and now it is about maximising what we have and trying to get every tenth out of the car. I’m confident we can still gain some more speed for tomorrow’s qualifying and the car seems to suit this track a little better than it has the last few circuits.

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