Strong performance by BMW at Practice 3


By BMW Sauber F1 Team
May 12 2007

In the third free practice session for the Spanish Grand Prix, BMW Sauber F1 Team drivers Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld confirmed the BMW Sauber F1.07's competitiveness by finishing third and fourth respectively. .

It was a promising start into the qualifying Saturday, for the Munich and Hinwil based squad. Again, neither Robert nor Nick experienced any problems whatsoever while completing the team's preparations for the remainder of the weekend.

Both Robert and Nick completed 17 laps and three stints respectively. In their first two stints, the focused on optimising the race setup on the harder compound and only in the closing stages of the session they went out on the softer compound. Robert completed another five-lap stint and on the first lap of this stint, he lapped the 4.655-kilometre 'Circuit de Catalunya in 1:21.364 minutes to secure third place, just 0.131 seconds behind the quickest, McLaren's Fernando Alonso (1:21.233 minutes) and 0.052 seconds behind second placed Lewis Hamilton (McLaren, 1:21.312 minutes).

Just a minute after his team-mate, Nick also went out - for a four-lap stint on the softer compound - and on the first timed lap of this stint, he set his personal fastest lap time (1:21.464 minutes), thus finishing fourth. Remarkable: Both Nick and Robert succeeded in setting a fastest split time: Nick in the second and Robert in the third sector.

This was a fine performance," said BMW Motorsport Director Mario Theissen. "For the major part of the session we focused on completing race simulations on used sets of tyres. We succeeded in setting consistent laps and that was really pleasing. And the fast laps set in the closing stages also were good. Still, we've got what it needs to improve by several tenths of a second, in qualifying. We should be able to again qualify for row three by own means and should somebody make a mistake, an even better result could be possible."

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