Brazilian GP: Williams Friday notes

The BMW WilliamsF1 Team drivers, Juan Pablo Montoya and Ralf Schumacher, had a trouble free productive day, apart from a puncture on Juan Pablo's left rear tyre, in the first session. They were 2nd and 4th respectively in the first Free Practice sessions of the 2001 Brazilian Grand Prix.

Juan Pablo Montoya:

"I am pretty happy with the job we did today. We worked on different tyres with good results, as the car felt more stable and had much more grip in the end. Traction was also not too bad. It's a pity I made a mistake in my last set of tyres, right after I achieved the best time (purple) in sector one, but it doesnít really matter. For a Friday, I think we learned a lot."

Ralf Schumacher:

"I am still not happy with the set-up of my car. We are still fighting with understeer. From my perspective our lap times show how strong we can be here. We should have sorted out the set-up problems by tomorrow, anyway. It is quite difficult to evaluate today's fastest times, as we don't know how much fuel the other teams were running. I think anyway that tomorrow's pole position is going to be decided between Michael, Juan and myself."

Sam Michael (Chief Operations Engineer, WilliamsF1):

"We went through our standard programme with no problems, which is positive for the Friday of a Grand Prix weekend. We worked on the race set-up and were looking at the two different tyres Michelin is providing here at Interlagos. Mechanical set up is quite important here because of the bumps and for this we found a good direction. Now we have some work to do on the qualifying set up."

Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director):

"We are very happy with today's Free Practice. Both the drivers have completed their programme according to the schedule. There was no problem on the engine side, not even the high temperature has brought to the P82 any problem at all. A feature of this track is its height, of 850 meters above sea level. This means more or less a 9% lower air pressure and a similar lower engine power for everybody."

Weather: dry, 31C Air, 42C Track

Ralf Schumacher: 4th
Chassis: FW24 04
Best time: 1:15.477

Juan Pablo Montoya: 2nd
Chassis: FW24 02
(T-Car: FW24 01)
Best time: 1:15.345

-williams-