WilliamsF1 Team Comments: Friday Qualifying

By Andrew Hooper
August 22 2003

 
 
Hungarian GP Friday - Team Comments
 
Today marked a satisfactory start to the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend for the BMW WilliamsF1 Team’s drivers, Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya, who recorded 2nd and 8th fastest times respectively at the Hungaroring during the first qualifying session.
 
Juan Pablo Montoya
Juan Pablo Montoya"I didn’t put together the best lap, really. My first sector wasn’t good enough as I braked a bit too early into the first corner of the chicane. The balance of my car wasn’t as good as I expected, especially at the start of the lap. In this morning’s Free Practice I was seven tenths quicker than in qualifying. The track was very dirty when I went out but it improved during qualifying as it got cleaner and cleaner. However, I believe our package should be pretty competitive here. We’ve got the pace."
 
Ralf Schumacher
 Ralf Schumacher"I am fairly happy with my qualifying lap. This morning I had some problems with the set up and we made quite a few changes on the car which seem to have been in the right direction. The track is slippery as it has always been here, especially if you come off the line. For sure you don’t want to be the first car to go out on track. The new track is nice, even if in a way I preferred the old corner because I thought it was a bit more technically demanding, but with respect to sorting out the bumps, they did a really good job. We should be strong here."
 
Dr Mario Theissen BMW Motorsports Director
 Mario Theissen"We can be happy with this today’s performance. The engines didn’t experience any problems and this morning both the drivers could complete their set-up programme. Ralf had a good qualifying session and Juan Pablo could not qualify any better than 8th as he
was penalised by his early start position. Looking at the times of the first three drivers who went out on the track for qualifying, one can tell that the track was very dirty and didn’t provide very good grip. During the session the tarmac became cleaner and cleaner and allowed the drivers to set better lap times."
 
Sam Michael Chief Operations Engineer WilliamsF1
 Sam Michael"During today’s qualifying session the change of grip of the circuit was quite significant due the dust, so it was difficult to see what our true pace actually was. Now we are looking forward to tomorrow and working on the race set-up. We can be pretty competitive here."
 
 
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