When questioned as to how far advanced the WilliamsF1 team was in the development of the new car WilliamsF1 Technical Director Patrick Head would not be drawn on specifics only saying that the team had a specification for the new that that is constantly been updated.

Head said: "Well, we are certainly doing a new transmission for next year but I don't know very much about Ferrari's transmission, but obviously we're not happy with the results we have achieved this year. We've obviously spent a lot of time analysing why and initially wrote out a specification for the new car and that's steadily being developed and we're working towards that and only next year we'll see whether we've made a good step forward."

As for the areas where the team was attempting to make improvements Head would only say: "Lack of speed. Nothing else that I'm going to talk about."

As for BMW's offer to help in the design of the 2003 car Head made it clear that although BMW was not a company that specialised in Formula One cars, they did have people who were capable.

Head added: "There is some collaboration on the transmission side, but we are looking at some other areas and have been looking at some other areas. BMW have obviously got big resources but are not specialists in Formula One racing cars, but they have certainly got a lot of very capable people."

As for what stage the development of the new car was at Head added: "We are testing with developments of the current car, we will run a current car with the new engine in it fairly soon, which will have a modified version of the current gearbox on the back of it and then later this year we will be running another version of the current car with next year's engine in it with the basis of next year's transmission in it as well, and then it is all a planned stage, but we certainly have a date for the first running of the new car and it is certainly in 2003, as a complete unit."

As for the teams chances in the Italian Grand Prix this weekend Head felt that their was little reason for the gap between the WilliamsF1 team and that of Ferrari to close even at this circuit which should favour the FW24.

Head said: "The higher speed circuits have been circuits that have suited us quite well in the past and different types of layout of car can sometimes optimise their performance towards one end of the downforce scale or the other. Obviously at the moment one tends to try and optimise things towards the higher downforce end because that is where the predominance of the circuits are but over the last few years we have generally been more competitive at Hockenheim and Monza than we have at other tracks, I am sure that is probably why Juan Pablo might have said that.

But where as last year I think the Ferrari had very definite weaknesses, they have done a very good job of attending to those weaknesses, so I don't think the Ferrari has types of circuit at which it is weak anymore. I think we might be closer than previously, but the gap technically between the Ferrari this year and our package is big and I don't see any reason why it should suddenly be reversed."