Following the second free practice at Monza, BMW Motorsport Director Mario Theissen commented: “I think that we are well-prepared for Saturday. This optimism refers to the fact that we have still something up our sleeve that we haven’t shown today.”

Theissen would not go into details as to what the innovation was except he would add: “I’m also excited personally about the impact tomorrow. All I can say is that: it’s something technical.”

BMW Motorsport Director Gerhard Berger was confident even before the opening of the weekend: “I assume that we are the best as far as engines are concerned”, said the Austrian.

After qualifying it was revealed that the BMW V10 engines of Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya passed the speed threshold of 19,000 revolutions per minute for the first time. Both drivers of the BMW WilliamsF1 Team achieved engine performance of 19,050 revs.

Compare this to the performance of the V10 engine in BMW’s debut race at Melbourne in March 2000, where this engine performance was only doing 17,000 revolutions a minute.

“With this record figure we have once again raised the threshold in terms of our engine performance,” said BMW Motorsport Director Mario Theissen. “For an engineer it is thrilling to see figures which not so long ago were considered unattainable, suddenly becoming reality.”

Werner Laurenz, the man responsible for the development of the P82, added: “During the race at Monza the rev counter won’t yet hit the 19,000 rpm mark. But in principle we don’t develop special qualifying engines. Each development stage is ultimately destined for the race, following its successful deployment in qualifying and the completion of endurance testing.”

Since BMW’s Formula One comeback, engine speed - and with it power output - has been steadily increasing – from 17,000 rpm (at the start of the 2000 season) to 18,000 (start of 2001) and 18,500 (start of 2002), all the way to the first figure in excess of the 19,000 rpm mark at Monza. BMW assumed the leadership in engine performance with the P80 in 2001 and has not relinquished it since.

19,000 revolutions a minute means 9,500 ignitions a minute per cylinder. That translates to 158 ignitions per second for each cylinder, or one ignition every six thousandth of a second. The fuel/air mixture is drawn into the cylinder, compressed by the piston and ignited by the spark plug; then the flame front travels through the entire combustion chamber, the combustion gas expands and, by means of the pistons, provides the engine’s power before being discharged through the exhaust ports. All this happens 158 times a second in each of the 10 cylinders. Awesome statistics. By way of comparison, a production engine achieves around a third of this engine speed.