WilliamsF1 Team Comments: Spanish GP

By Andrew Hooper
May 4 2003

 
 
Spanish GP Race - Team Comments
 
A reasonable conclusion to a difficult weekend for the BMW WilliamsF1 Team, which collected nine valuable points today in the Spanish Grand Prix. This result was achieved thanks to Juan Pablo Montoya's fourth position after he qualified ninth and Ralf Schumacher's fifth place, having started 7th on the grid.
 
Juan Pablo Montoya
Juan Pablo Montoya"IThe car was quite difficult to drive initially and I decided just to pace myself in order to get to the end of the race and get some good points from this race. We had balanced the car in a different way than usual and it was therefore more difficult to drive but towards the end of the race when there was more grip on the track the tyres worked much better and the car felt pretty good. It was good fun today, I enjoyed the racing and I am glad we could collect some good points."
 
Ralf Schumacher
 Ralf Schumacher"After all the testing we did on this track, we thought we could achieve a better result. But after the struggle that we went through this weekend, we are reasonably happy with fourth and fifth positions. When I went off the circuit a part of my bodywork got ripped, which caused my car to oversteer quite a lot. In the last 16 laps I had a hard but fair fight with Cristiano da Matta. All in all this weekend showed that we have a lot of work ahead of us."
 
Dr Mario Theissen BMW Motorsports Director
 Mario Theissen"After we struggled in the Free Practice and Qualifying, fourth and fifth positions for us are a positive result, even if we were only able to keep pace with the leaders in the first part of the race. Juan Pablo drove a trouble fee race whereas Ralf had severe oversteer in the last part of the race. He drove his last 16 laps under immensely strong pressure from Da Matta's Toyota and he successfully defended his fifth position. When Ralf went off into the gravel, the engine air cooling was damaged making the last few laps a very difficult test for the water and oil temperatures which the BMW P83 clearly passed."
 
Sam Michael Chief Operations Engineer WilliamsF1
 Sam Michael"It is good for the constructors' championship to get points with both cars. We had no problems regarding reliability and the pit stops were also very good. It was a difficult race in terms of managing the strategy. After the safety car had come out for three laps right after the start, we changed our pit strategy from three to two stops. The decision to change the strategy was a close call, particularly with Ralf and he may have done better on a three stop. He had difficulties with his car towards the end of the race due to some damage to the floor and bodywork after he slid into the gravel and lost a lot of downforce. Juan did a good steady job to come home fourth."
 
 
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