Logan Sargent admitted the Williams team wasn’t entirely happy with the day’s results, having damaged the driveshaft of the new FW46 car when he went off track after just eleven laps, but the American driver is hopeful that he can get it tomorrow.
Logan Sargent: “Obviously we didn’t manage to do everything we wanted to do today, but we can’t say everything is that bad – there were positive moments too.
The car is very fundamentally different from last year, although there are of course still some things we need to work on, but we know which way to go. Once we figure everything out, the FW46 will be much better.
So far I have only been able to complete 11 laps, but I hope to be able to work productively tomorrow and I also hope that we can find answers to some of the questions that have arisen today. We definitely need to work on the balance of the car, this is not yet in order, but we can say that the team has managed to solve the main problems that hindered us last year.
The FW46 handles corners much more confidently, but we need to find the right approach to the car, i.e. learn how to configure and test it optimally.”
Sargent also explained what caused the car to leave the track, causing damage that prevented it from continuing to drive normally on the track.
“It happened unexpectedly,” the American racer admitted. “The bottom of the car just hit a bump on the highway and it spun straight away, but at least now I know what to do so it doesn’t happen again tomorrow.
Of course the team is not completely satisfied with the results of the first day of testing because we lost a lot of time, but that’s how it turned out. There are still two whole days ahead of us, and we will try to catch up. Plus, we have a few extra sets of tires that we didn’t use today.”
James Vowles, the team manager, summarized Wednesday’s results: “The first day of testing did not go well in many respects. We drove far fewer laps than planned – in the morning this was due to a malfunction in the fuel system. There are several pumps present, and one of them, the high-pressure pump, is defective.
And in the afternoon the drive shaft of the FW46 was damaged. These are two completely different problems, but what they have in common is that in both cases valuable time was lost that we could spend working on the track and studying the car. But we can also note some positive aspects: it seems that we managed to overcome the difficulties that hindered us last year.
When we got our first impressions of the car during the shooting day, it was clear that we were going in the right direction, and today both drivers confirmed this. At the same time, we learned a lot more about the car, and this all corresponds to what we discovered while working on the simulator.
What’s important is that the FW46 seems to handle the corners where last year’s car handled the worst well. Of course, we continue to work on those aspects of the car’s balance that need improvement, and now the job is to put it all together.
The new car can be called far from ideal and we still have to work hard on the settings, but the most important thing is that we were still able to complete a certain number of laps and began to understand how to act to get the most out of the FW46. ”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.