Nico Hulkenberg remains intent on marking his debut grand prix with a top-10 qualifying position and race-day points finish after performing impressively in Friday practice.
The GP2 champion finished his first Formula 1 practice session in 12th position in Bahrain before moving up to sixth in the afternoon in a time that was only just a second off the leading pace.
And while team-mate Rubens Barrichello experienced technical problems during the day, Hulkenberg nevertheless comfortably outpaced F1’s most experienced driver in both sessions and is now eyeing a similarly strong weekend.
“It’s still very difficult to form a picture of where everyone is at competitively, but I am satisfied that we had a relatively good day today and managed to compete everything we set out to do,” the German said.
“The ambition remains the same, to make sure we get through to Q3 and to finish the weekend with some points.”
A morning electrics problem in its garage and further car glitches for Williams contributed to Barrichello only completing 11 laps in the first practice session for his new team and, while things improved as the day wore on, the 11-time grand prix winner was still unable to complete his planned Friday programme.
However, he his confident the disrupted opening day won’t prove to be costly.
“Because we had some minor issues in the garage today, we didn’t get as much track time as we wanted,” Barrichello said after finishing the afternoon session a second adrift of Hulkenberg in 13th.
“We didn’t manage to finish our programme, but I am confident tomorrow will be a better day and we will catch up on the lost time.
“There has been an enormous amount of work and effort from everyone at Williams to get this far, which deserves my thanks.”