Williams opted not to run the Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) on Rubens Barrichello’s car in order to compare the benefit of the system against Pastor Maldonado, who did run the system.
The loss of KERS, which provides an 80bhp boost for 6.6 seconds at the drivers discretion, might explain the gap of four-tenths between Maldonado and Barrichello, the former qualified in 13th whilst the Brazilian settled for 14th.
“We knew we might struggle on my car as we weren’t able to use KERS here,” said Barrichello after qualifying. “We didn’t have an ideal balance on the car, particularly compared to the morning, and it wasn’t possible to get on top of that during the session.
“We need to analyse that in detail, and look for better pace in the race tomorrow.”
Technical director Sam Michael confirmed the move was to collect some data to compare the gains and losses the system provides in terms of the boost it provides, but the weight it also carries.
“We did run with quite different specifications between the two cars, with Rubens using the new diffuser and front wing and not running KERS, in order to give us more information going forward.
“On Rubens’ car we chose not to race with KERS here in order to get some more data for comparison. Now we’ll have a look through all of that data tonight while focussing on the important race decisions.”
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