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Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director): "We produced a solid performance in today's qualifying.

HA, HA. No kidding. 10th and 11th is not what I would call solid performance. Was better than in Monaco, but still is not what we expected.

being 0.4 s off the leading pace is not that bad,better understanding of how to set up thecar with the new aero plus few minor tweaks here and there and we will be back in business. not bad at all!

0.4s it's like 1s year or 2 years ago...

Quote:

nasalkid
being 0.4 s off the leading pace is not that bad,better understanding of how to set up thecar with the new aero plus few minor tweaks here and there and we will be back in business. not bad at all!

0.4 sec is OK, but that doesn't make them to score the points.
Only 1st place that what's counts. Any thing less second best.

it's important not to forget this year is special
McLaren are back
ferrari just in front of BMW
But all of those teams are behind teams like brawn, red bull williams anfd toyota

adding that gap between teams are small (very), it makes this year very particular. All in all, it makes difficult any definite judgement

I agree with nasalkid and paul45.

Let's do a quick comparison between Malaysian Q2, Bahrain Q2, Spanish Q2, Monaco Q2, and Turkish Q2 when all cars are in their most competitive form. I know these tracks differ in aerodynamic setups but still, we can draw some conclusions on how good the imrovements are.

I'm going to post only the fastest of Ferrari, McLaren Mercedes, Brawn Mercedes, RBR Renault, and us.

Malaysian Q2 - gap

J. Button, Brawn Mercedes - 1:33.784
......
M. Webber, RBR Renault - 1:34.222 - 0.438
......
K. Raikkonen, Ferrari - 1:34.456 - 0.672
......
R. Kubica, BMW Sauber F1 - 1:34.562 - 0.778
......
L. Hamilton, McLaren Mercedes - 1:34.905 - 1.121

Bahrain Q2 - gap

S. Vettel, RBR Renault - 1:32.474
......
J. Button, Brawn Mercedes - 1:32.842 - 0.368
......
F. massa, Ferrari - 1:32.827 - 0.353
......
L. Hamilton, McLaren Mercedes - 1:32.877 - 0.403
......
R. Kubica, BMW Sauber F1 - 1:33.487 - 1.013

Spanish Q2 - gap ***U***

R. Barrichello, Brawn Mercedes - 1:19.954
......
M. Webber, RBR Renault - 1:20.007 - 0.054
......
F. Massa, Ferrari - 1:20.149 - 0.195
......
R. kubica, BMW Sauber F1 - 1:20.408 - 0.454
......
L. Hamilton, McLaren Mercedes - 1:20.805 - 0.851

Monaco Q2 - gap

K. Raikkonen, Ferrari - 1:14.514
......
H. Kovalainen, McLaren Mercedes - 1:14.809 - 0.295
......
M. Webber, RBR Renault - 1:14.825 - 0.311
......
R. Barrichello - Brawn Mercedes - 1:14.829 - 0.315
......
R. Kubica, BMW Sauber F1 - disq.

Turkish Q2 - gap ***U***

S. Vettel, RBR Renault - 1:27.016
......
J. Button, Brawn Mercedes - 1:27.230 - 0.214
......
F. Massa, Ferrari - 1:27.349 - 0.333
......
R. Kubica, BMW Sauber F1 - 1:27.455 - 0.439
......
H. Kovalainen, McLaren Mercedes - disq.

So you can see that whenever we introduce a major update, the gap reduces back to 0.4--, which is a fruitful result. But what draws my attention even further more is the gap between us and Ferrari. That means in our first major update, the gap between us and Ferrari was 0.259 whereas in our second major update, the gap between us and Ferrari reduced to 0.106. That is more or less a good indication that if we continue with our development/update pace like that, we're going to overleap Ferrari. And that is what we might be able to achieve at most this season in my opinion.

P.S. ***U*** denotes the introduction of a major update on our cars.

BMW Power

Yes it is in terms of grid positions but its still only 0.4 to make up and not 1 s. the most important thing is we found some answers and the direction we took finally seems good

replying to soarq post

I am not denying we are closer. In fact if you would consider gao in % of laptime, not seconds, it would be even more indicative.

Istanbul track is longer than than Catalunya, so +0,4 in gao here is less behind than +0,4 gap there.

It's just that I expected we may bigger leaf towards front in comparison to our Barcelona pace.

Yeah, it looks great comparing to Bahrain or Monaco, but in those track we were some bad I would rather quickly discard them as any benchmarks.

Barcelona should be a benchmark, as this was the previous version of the car upgrade.

And on final note:

We are comparing single best Q2 laps. Nothing wrong with that. But let's remember the driving factor in it. A single little mistake or lack of it can easily swing the gap back or forth by 0,2 sec.

Also have in mind BMW has probably worst mechanical grip on the grid. Aero is reasonable, but they need to fix mechanical side of the car - which means B spec of F1.09 is needed.

There were made great mistakes in design of the car, and some people have to kicked out of the team IMHO. Sorry it's Formula 1, if you're not good enough you're out!

If I recall correctly, Kubica aborted his last flying lap in Q2. So he could be maybe even one tenth quicker.

2008 Prediction Champion

I find it funny how some call it not enough. How much is enough relative to them? Did they expect to see our team jump from 9th team to 2nd? I find it ridiculous. In my eyes, jumping from 9th to 4th is more than enough.

BMW Power

popilirol a.k.a. rolren, what was the jump between Barcelona and Istanbul races?

2008 Prediction Champion

Quote:

popilirol a.k.a. rolren
I find it funny how some call it not enough. How much is enough relative to them? Did they expect to see our team jump from 9th team to 2nd? I find it ridiculous. In my eyes, jumping from 9th to 4th is more than enough.

From 9th? You mean Monaco? The hole in which have fallen? What kinf of comparison basis is that? By this way of logic Toyota made quite of a jump, as they went from 10th to 3rd. LOL

And you saw us in 4th in Turkey? That's seriously pink glasses you are looking through. Who exactly we were quicker than: Toyota? Ferrari? Williams?

I see you are set for joyful season: all we have to do is swing between 9th and 5th and you will be jumping with joy every second race...