Report: First Friday Practice sessions of 2023 complete

Williams Racing are reflecting on the data learned at the first Friday running of the 2023 season. Both Alex Albon and Logan Sargeant enjoyed two incident-free sessions, further developing their understanding of the FW45.

Our Thai racer placed P19 and P17 in FP1 and FP2 respectively, whilst LS2 was P18 and P20.

Alex was pleased with the progress made between sessions, sharing: “FP2 was much better than FP1.

“We’ve still got a bit of work to do but we’re close. If you look at AlphaTauri and Haas cars, on race pace we are close to them, so that’s who we’re fighting and let’s see tomorrow if we can get those little bits together to get them.

“Because of the way deg is around here, race pace is a bit more important than qualifying pace. Ease of overtaking is quite high, so if you’re the quicker car you tend to get past.

“You’re setting up the car for Qualifying, but with one and a half eyes on the race! There’s a bit of an unknown to race one; reliability across the paddock is less than the final races of the year and some teams get on top of their packages earlier than others.

“Realistically, maybe we don’t have the quickest car on the grid, but we can do a better job than others and maybe finish out of sequence.”

Logan, competing in his first Free Practice session as an F1 driver, was pleased to have a smooth first day.

“It was nice to experience a full day. As expected, as the temperature came down, the car really came to us.

“I was quite surprised with how much grip we picked up this evening which is something I need to maximise a little bit better.

“FP3 tomorrow is during the day when the temperatures are high so today was our best read going into Qualifying tomorrow.

“We're going to dig deep into the analysis tonight and see what we can go for in Qualifying. In general, it was a good first full day in the office.

Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance, offered a full insight into how the day unfolded as he watched on from the pit wall.

“As usual on Friday in Bahrain, the two opening Free Practice sessions were very different. The drivers were much happier with the car in the cooler conditions of FP2.

“We were able to run a full programme this evening and get a good sense of how the car will perform in both qualifying and race conditions.

“There are still some things to work on this evening and we will be able to make the car another step better for tomorrow. However, we’ll need to be careful not to get confused in the hotter conditions of FP3.

“Both drivers did a good job today, especially Logan who experienced for the first time the big swing in car performance in the evening session. This was valuable learning and will put him in a strong place to tackle tomorrow.

“There are invariably opportunities at the opening races of the season, and we will be looking to get ourselves into a position to race as many cars as possible on Sunday.”