By Andrew Hooper
July 6 2003
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| WilliamsF1 dominates qualifying | |
| Qualifying
for the French Grand Prix would again see the BMW WilliamsF1 team dominate
proceedings with Ralf Schumacher achieving his fourth pole of the season
closely followed by team-mate Juan Pablo Montoya in second. Such was their
pace that their nearest rival was nearly half a second slower than the pole
time set by Ralf.
In the post qualifying interviews Ralf spoke gave his thoughts of qualifying and for the race. He indicated that he has still has concerns about the Ferrari and McLaren teams. Ralf said: "Well, you saw that Juan came very close so it wasn’t very
easy. It looks like we have a slight advantage with the Williams, so it’s
great for us being first and second definitely. The team did a great job.
Just hope that we make a bit more out of it than we did in Montreal. Juan Pablo said: "This morning I was struggling with the car a lot. I wasn’t very comfortable with it, I was driving, I couldn’t really push the car because it would just snap or go or something. For qualifying, at least it felt a lot better. I had a big understeer in turn two, I lost a lot of time there in sector one, about two tenths off my morning session time. But apart from that, everything went really well. We got from being six tenths behind this morning to a tenth. It’s a lot better."
Juan Pablo added: "I had big understeer in turn two, lost a lot of time, and in turn seven
but apart from that it was a pretty good lap. I picked up a lot of time from
the morning, I really wasn’t comfortable with the car and came in after
warm-up and I was like you know ‘I’m driving the car round but I’m not
really pushing it’. Every time I was pushing the car I was quite
uncomfortable and in qualifying I managed to get a good lap in. It felt a
lot better, probably the best it felt all weekend, but probably a little too
late."
Ralf said: "Certainly I didn’t like the beginning of the season from the results. I
knew from last year, if you go through the records, usually at the beginning
of the qualifying I’ve always been reasonable. I think there were a few
difficulties and maybe personally maybe I didn’t get on very well with the
car to start with, it seemed to be difficult to find a set-up and I didn’t
feel comfortable with it. Since a couple of races it seems to be a bit
better." For Head the qualifying results were great but that a lot can go wrong in the race and that both drivers must not lose this opportunity to come away with maximum points.
Head said: "There are many ways
of getting it wrong on race day," he said. "We are not counting our
chickens. We had an all-Williams front-row in Montreal but in that race we
didn't manage to turn it into the top of the podium - so I think there is
still going to be a good race this weekend." |
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