{"id":2081,"date":"2010-02-03T07:11:36","date_gmt":"2010-02-03T12:11:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=2081"},"modified":"2010-02-03T07:11:36","modified_gmt":"2010-02-03T12:11:36","slug":"no-friday-sessions-for-williams-tester-bottas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/no-friday-sessions-for-williams-tester-bottas\/","title":{"rendered":"No Friday sessions for Williams&#8217; tester Bottas"},"content":{"rendered":"<h5><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Williams has played down speculation it may follow Force India&#8217;s lead by giving its new test driver some track time during Friday practice sessions in 2010.<\/span><\/h5>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Unveiling Paul di Resta&#8217;s new test and reserve role on Tuesday, Force India confirmed that the 23-year-old Scot will appear in the place of the team&#8217;s race drivers during some Friday practice sessions this year.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll sacrifice some of the race drivers&#8217; track time so Paul can get up to speed,&#8221; chief operating officer Otmar Szafnauer is quoted as saying by the Independent.<\/p>\n<p>Grove based Williams last week signed 20-year-old Finn Valtteri Bottas as rookie race driver Nico Hulkenberg&#8217;s successor as team tester.<\/p>\n<p>Interpreted as a hint of a Friday role, the youngster said he will drive in Williams&#8217; simulator this year, at young driver tests, and &#8220;who knows if I might get another opportunity&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>But Finland&#8217;s Turun Sanomat newspaper, having interviewed technical director Sam Michael, said Williams does not plan to give Bottas track time at grands prix.<\/p>\n<p>Australian Michael also said Bottas will not appear in the FW32 during the February tests.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have an agreement with him, but whether he is the next Finnish driver (in F1) remains to be seen,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Only in a couple of years will tell whether he made the same progress as the two Nicos,&#8221; Michael added, referring to Nico Rosberg and Hulkenberg.<\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"color: #999999;\">\u00a9 RIF|GMM<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Williams has played down speculation it may follow Force India&#8217;s lead by giving its new test driver some track time during Friday practice sessions in 2010. \u00a0 Unveiling Paul di Resta&#8217;s new test and reserve role on Tuesday, Force India confirmed that the 23-year-old Scot will appear in the place of the team&#8217;s race drivers &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5262,543,448,323,544,538,595],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2081"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2083,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081\/revisions\/2083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}