Belgian GP: Williams race notes

The BMW WilliamsF1 Team suffered bad luck today, with neither car crossing the finish line despite showing a strong performance. Juan Pablo Montoya and Antonio Pizzonia failed to collect any points from an exciting and eventful Belgian Grand Prix due to a tyre failure for the Colombian and a gearbox problem for the Brazilian. The problems spelt a premature end to their races when both drivers were running in a strong third position.

Juan Pablo Montoya:

"Bad luck again, today. The car was really good and I was having a good race and running third with a few laps to go, but then the right rear tyre failed, and some other parts of the car were damaged forcing me to retire. That's racing, what can you do? It's not the first time that this has happened and probably not the last, but one has to accept it."

"Still, it was a good race. In spite of my poor grid position I had a good start and gained several places, helped by the accidents on the first lap. I'd climbed up to fifth by lap five and basically battled all race in the top positions. The team helped me by doing very good pit-stops and coming up with a good strategy so it's a real shame what happened to me and Antonio today."

Antonio Pizzonia:

"What a shame! I hadn't had the smallest problem with my car all race and then, suddenly, I lost all the gears when I was running third. Bad day for the team and it's a true pity that Juan Pablo failed to finish too, but this is motor racing, isn't it? I came to Spa thinking that I could achieve my first podium in F1 here and I proved this was possible, but I was hoping for a better outcome. Still, today we showed a strong performance and this is what we have to take away form here."

Sam Michael (Technical Director WilliamsF1):

"For us, it was obviously a disappointing race in terms of the final results. However, it was encouraging competing at the front again, while our cars where running. Antonio drove well and Juan Pablo showed his overtaking skills again. Antonio lost drive on his car and had to stop on the track. On Juan's car, we had a tyre failure which damaged the rear suspension and the rear wing. He managed to drive the car back to the pits but could not continue."

Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director):

"This was more than an eventful race today, with all the dramas that one would normally see in half a season and a very unfortunate outcome for us. When our drivers were running in third and fourth positions, Antonio suddenly lost drive. A bit later, Juan Pablo had a tyre failure, the rear of his car got damaged and he had to retire. The remarkable number of tyre failures today needs to be carefully analysed for safety reasons. Congratulations to Kimi Räikkönen for a convincing victory and to Michael Schumacher for winning his seventh Drivers' Title."

-williams-