Driver: Valtteri Bottas
Chassis / Engine: FW38-01 / PU106C Hybrid
Location: Silverstone Circuit, 5.891km
Weather: Warm and dry in the morning, rain in the early afternoon, warm and dry late afternoon
Maximum air & track temps: 20ºC / 17ºC
Rod Nelson, Chief Test & Support Engineer: This morning we did some medium length runs to look at first lap performance and tyre degradation with various mechanical set-ups. We had a new front suspension and an alternative rear suspension that we worked through. Most of the afternoon was spent looking at mechanical set-up work but predominantly aero testing on the soft tyres. We have to choose which tyres we bring to a test so we have to choose the appropriate tyre for what we want to do. For this reason we used the medium tyre for the longer mechanical runs and the soft tyre for the shorter aero runs. All-in-all it was a very successful day to end the test.
Valtteri Bottas: The morning session was very good. We focused on high fuel, longer runs and got 100% of our test programme done, with some interesting results. The weather was good in the morning so we were able to collect plenty of data. In the afternoon we had a bit of a rain shower, which cost us a bit of time so we completed most of our planned programme. We continued with some high fuel runs early on in the afternoon but towards the end of the session we switched our focus to some aero testing. I think all-in-all with the weather conditions we had it was a very good day. We have lots of data to analyse and I really enjoyed being back in the car, as always.
Valtteri Bottas: 1.32.423 (6th) on lap 86/98.
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