Barrichello unsure why Williams off pace
Date published : 02 Apr 2010 - 11:31:10
Rubens Barrichello says Williams needs to urgently get to the bottom of why its FW32 was so far of the pace on the opening day of the Malaysian Grand Prix weekend.Neither of the Grove squad's drivers finished higher than 16th on the Friday practice timesheets, with Barrichello's fastest time from the second session over two and a half seconds off the pace.The veteran Brazilian conceded it had been a difficult day and that the team would work hard overnight to try and pinpoint why it was struggling.That was a tough day for us, Barrichello said. We carried out lots of interrogations on the car, but we feel that we aren't as quick as we should be so we have a lot of work to do tonight to find out why that is.Team-mate Nico Hulkenberg finished second practice one place behind the sister Williams in 17th place on the times, bit was a further 0.6s off the front-running pace after only completing 19 laps following an unspecified mechanical problemIt was a pretty difficult day, certainly not ideal, the rookie admitted.We had some technical issues on my car but I'm not quite sure what they are yet. We need to get our heads together to find some time for qualifying.Williams technical chief Sam Michael revealed the team had been assessing the impact of a revised diffuser and front rake duct on the FW32's performances during the two sessions, but that its attention would now turn to improving its lap times.We spent today's practice sessions working on starts and evaluating a revised diffuser and front brake duct, Michael said.The tyres appear to be quite stable again, something we've come to expect from Bridgestone.Tonight we'll be focussing on extracting more speed out of the FW32 for qualifying. We had a mechanical problem on Nico's car in the afternoon session, but the mechanics were able to fix it quickly.
