Australian GP: Williams Friday notes

Australian Grand Prix - Free Practice
1st March 2002

Weather:
Intermittent rain. Air temp. 17°C average. Track temperature 17°C average.

The BMW WilliamsF1 Team had quite a positive start in the first practice sessions of the 2002 season, at the Australian Grand Prix. At the end of the day Ralf Schumacher was third and Juan Pablo Montoya was fourth.

Ralf Schumacher
Position: 3rd
Chassis: FW24 04
Best Time: 1:28.821

"We were a bit unlucky with the weather today. At the start of the first session the track was wet and we had some rain later as well. A positive thing was that I could test both the wet and the intermediate tyres. Additionally I also tried the two types of dry tyre options and we have decided which we're going to use for tomorrow. Ferrari appears far away but I hope that we will be able to catch up during the weekend."

Juan Pablo Montoya
Position: 4th
Chassis: FW24 02
T-car: FW24 01
Best Time: 1:28.870

"The track was very slippery at the start, so it was quite difficult to adjust the car to it. I suffered with oversteer in the first session and understeer in the second and the intermittent rain did not help as the conditions of the track were quickly chan ging and weren't even consistent over the lap. We managed anyway to work on the tyres and I think we have collected valuable data. We'll see tomorrow."

Sam Michael (Chief Operations Engineer, WilliamsF1)

"We had to start off with a wet session, which affected our normal Friday plan. We did a lot of homework for the race, looked at two different tyres checking the car in race conditions. This is obviously a very hard circuit on brakes and we are straining at her components on the car as well. We have a lot of data to look up now to try to put us in a good position tomorrow and we are feeling reasonably confident going into Saturday."

Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director)

"It's good to have finally started, after all the winter testing and preparation work. Also positive is that we didn't experience any problem on the engine side in this first Free Practice of the new season. Both cars have run many laps -- Ralf completed 33 and Juan 36. The main target of today was finding a good base set-up for this track and the weather helped as it allowed us to test every kind of tyres."

-williams-