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Williams wary of surprise at Barcelona

Williams’ Rod Nelson has warned that the second and third tests at Barcelona are more likely to expose weaknesses in the 2015 cars.

The first test at Jerez saw Ferrari top the times on three of the four days, while Mercedes comfortably completed the most mileage of the eight teams present in southern Spain. With the next two test taking place at the high-speed Circuit de Catalunya, chief test and support engineer Nelson says the change in track could expose weaknesses in any of the designs up and down the grid.

“You can always get a surprise when you go to a different circuit,” Nelson told F1i during an exclusive interview. “The loading will be different and maybe you’re using a bit more kerb and that’s putting your suspension under greater stress.

“Most people won’t have done significant performance work in Jerez because they’ll be waiting for the slightly higher temperatures and more representative suspension loadings and aero loadings that we get in Barcelona, whereas they will have concentrated on reliability and systems work in Jerez.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.