Courtesy of the Williams F1 team Bruno Senna answered some questions after the first day of testing at the Barcelona circuit.
Q: How happy are you with the progress of the car?
BS: We have done a lot of laps today. Again reliability seems to be in a good place. For sure the tyres are behaving differently from what they were in jerez. I think that Jerez is a higher energy track and will put the tyres in a better place so we need to understand exactly what we are doing here is very different than what we were doing in Jerez. Overall we have leant a bit about the car and I think there is still a lot to learn. We found differnt issues here from what we found in Jerez in terms of balance so it will be interesting to get feedback from Pastor and from Valtteri over the next two days to see where we can improve with different opinions.
Q: This is probably a slightly more representative track in terms of car performance, how positive are you about the pace, do you feel that it is an an optimist car?
BS: Well it is and it isn’t in a way its the temperature is very low … we can see much more marbles on the track that at Jerez. The track is already full of marbles which means that the tyres are probably not working so well. So it does favour the guys with more downforce more than other tracks so it will be interesting to see when the temperature rises what is going to happen to the balance and you know in the end the people who are running faster times are slower again so it shows that people are running different fuel loads so we shall see a bit later what’s the reality.
Q: You were here to do some setup work today. Mark Gillian said from the last test that there was some work to do on the slow corner traction. Has that improved in the third sector?
BS: Well I think we are learning about it. Today I don’t think we improved as much as we need to improve. For sure there is still room for improvement. Our car seems to be consistent on the medium to high speed but on the low speed still needs to work and again as I said that with the other guys driving the car they will have a different perspective so hopefully they will help us from different perspectives to find the right way.
Q: So is that just a setup issue finding a decent baseline setup that works in the slow stuff?
BS: Well we are going to have to wait and see if the changes we are make for tomorrow and the next two days are going to be enough to mitigate the issues that we have but I believe we have enough scope to do but we did not have enough time today to try enough stuff to see.
Q: For the first time in your career you can make long term plans, is that difficult in terms of relating to it you know working on a car you know you will be working for the whole season. Is it easier of is it difficult?
BS: I think it is great because I can give proper confident input into the car and the team is listening to me because it is in there interest to hear what the driver has to say to improve the car. I know that the team is also really motivated to get the car as competitive as possible for this season so it is very exciting times for me right now to be able to talk and have someone to be actually motivated to listen.
Q: It was announced yesterday that Wurz was going to act as a mentor for you for the rest of the season, and Pastor as well. I have seen him around today, has he given you any words of wisdom for testing.
BS: Well not yet he was late (laughter). Alex is a going to be a great addition to the team. I think for us having someone from the outside with experience to look at what we are doing and especially what we have to say sometimes, he has been around for enough time to know what sometimes can fast track the development of the team so I am sure that we can benefit from that me and Pastor and I will try to use him as much as possible.
source: © Williams F1
