Comments from BMW WilliamsF1 Team Members

By Andrew Hooper
June 10 2002

 
 
Canadian GP Race - Team Comments
 
After a promising start for the BMW WilliamsF1 Team, Juan Pablo Montoya was forced to retire from the Canadian Grand Prix, which he lead for 13 laps, due to a technical failure on lap 57 when he was running second. Ralf Schumacher’s race was hampered by re fuelling problems, but he eventually finished in 7th position.

The team will be conducting testing at Jerez from the 11th to 14th June (Marc Gene 11/12, Juan Pablo Montoya 13/14)
 
Juan Pablo Montoya
Juan Pablo Montoya"Everything looked perfect in the race, the car, the tyres, the strategy. I was closing the gap to Michael and with 13 laps to go I was catching him quickly and as we saw he was struggling at the end of the race. Suddenly I felt a loss of power and that was it. We did everything right but today was not for us."
 
Ralf Schumacher
 Ralf Schumacher"Today everything went wrong that could have gone wrong. You can just blame bad luck. I had a problem with the fuel rig and this meant that my race was practically lost after the additional pit stop that I had to make. Without all these problems I think I could have aimed for second place."
 
Dr Mario Theissen BMW Motorsports Director
 Mario Theissen"After yesterday’s pole we are obviously very disappointed about the outcome of this race. We had more problems on the cars during the race than what we had so far this season all together. Ralf could not get any clear laps in and was put down the order by a troubled pit stop. We were ready to watch an exciting final between Juan and Michael Schumacher, when an engine problem stopped him without any notice. We will analyse the reason of Juan’s engine failure in Munich as well as Ralf’s, who stopped right after the finish line."
 
Sam Michael Chief Operations EngineerWilliamsF1
 Sam Michael"It’s a pity for Juan because he was in the position where he could have challenged for the win. He did a different strategy to everybody else and made it work, which was impressive. I think that Ralf could have been in a good position as well but we had a problem with the fuel rig during his first pit stop. Not only did he have to wait for a long pit stop but he then had to come in again two laps later because we only got 5 kg of fuel in the car the first time. We are now looking into all the problems we had today."
 
 
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