With the announcement of BMW's purchase of a controlling interest in the Sauber Formula One team the only indication of what the relationship with the WilliamsF1 team was to be was a statement saying that  a decision would be made in a few weeks.

BMW Motorsport Director Dr Mario Theissen said: "In the partnership with WilliamsF1 we have celebrated successes together and taken the team forward. Both partners today are stronger than at the outset of our joint venture and are thus equipped for the future. What that future will look like will be decided over the next weeks."

But further comments from Dr Theissen pointed to BMW's desire to see the WilliamsF1 team continue to use BMW engines next season, despite BMW now running the Sauber team.

Dr Theissen said: "We had successes, with Williams, we were stimulating each other and we are well prepared for the future and we want this success, we want this success this year without any restriction, we want to win races during this season and we would be very happy if Williams will use the BMW engine for next season and this will be the topic of the next talks that we will have."

Theissen also made it clear that BMW would not supply a different engine to that used by their own team.

Dr Theissen added: "Well if we give engines to a second team the engines will have BMW stencilled on it, they won't be second rate or second class engines, we want to develop one type of engine, there is one ambition behind this but does not make sense to have two types of engines during the season so a second team will use and operate the same engines as the first team."

As for the relationship with the WilliamsF1 team Dr Theissen spoke of how it was never BMW's intention to look at achieving a controlling interest of the WilliamsF1 team, something that was speculated over for quite some time.

Theissen said: "The majority share in Williams has never been in the offing and we have never discussed it. At the beginning of this year we began talking to Sauber and our first intention was to deliver engines."

As for how he saw the relationship between BMW and the WilliamsF1 team Dr Theissen added: "If you talk about the co-operation with Williams, if you look at the entire span of the times, then I am very happy and very satisfied with a very good start. I can say Williams helped us a lot in the beginning to speed up things and learn everything there is to know about F1."