• Young Driver Test

Williams keen to test Bottas

Valtteri Bottas took part in FP1 at the British Grand Prix but had his running limited by rain © Sutton Images

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• Drivers:
• Valtteri Bottas
• |
• Bruno Senna

• Teams:
• Williams

Williams wants to use the Young Driver Test at Silverstone from July 12-13 to analyse their reserve driver Valtteri Bottas.

Bottas has been taking part in a number of Friday free practice sessions so far this season, and is highly rated inside Williams with the team viewing him as a future race driver. With in-season testing so limited Williams has opted to join HRT and Marussia at Silverstone this week and chief operations engineer Mark Gillan said that its main target will be to see what Bottas can do.

"The Silverstone test is a two day young driver test, with Thursday being held on the Grand-Prix circuit and the Friday on the International circuit, which for those who do not know is effectively the southern bottom half of the Grand Prix circuit," Gillan said. "Williams is very fortunate to have a young test driver with the talent and promise that Valtteri has and basically we want to put him through his paces over the two day event."

Bottas always replaces Bruno Senna in FP1 at race weekends, but Gillan also revealed that the team was happy with Senna's performance in the British Grand Prix on Sunday.

"Bruno had a very good race and was particularly strong both at the start and in the last part of the race when he was fighting hard for the 9th place. We continue to work with Bruno in the simulator and with the race programme to help him optimise his qualifying pace and I think that he can take a lot of positives from Silverstone into Hockenheim. He was unlucky not to progress into the final qualifying session when his hot timed lap was severely compromised by the yellow flag."

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