British GP: Williams Saturday qualifying notes

After qualifying in the top three for the past five races, neither BMW WilliamsF1 Team driver enjoyed as strong a performance today. However, Ralf Schumacher will start from second row having secured 4th position and Juan Pablo Montoya set the 7th fastest time today.

Ralf Schumacher:

"I believe we are well prepared for the race even though my qualifying result wasn't excellent, mainly due to the fact that I was struggling with the balance of my car, so as a consequence I am not too disappointed. Ferrari have again proved to be very strong here but nevertheless Michael is starting behind me on the grid. However, today's qualifying result was quite unusual."

Juan Pablo Montoya:

"I am disappointed with this result because my car was very good and very stable this morning, and then it turned out to be not as positive in the warm-up and in qualifying. I didn't seem to have found the right balance as I was experiencing plenty of oversteer in some of the corners and generally poor traction. The car was very difficult to drive and very snappy. Now we must consider this in some detail before tomorrow. Anyway, we knew that this track was going to be tough for us. I am happy for Rubens who made it on pole, after he started so early on the session."

Sam Michael (Chief Operations Engineer, WilliamsF1):

"It was a reasonable qualifying session for the team but we are pretty confident that we are going to have quite a good pace in the race and a good strategy."

Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director):

"Starting fourth and seventh reflects the fact that both the drivers were not too happy with their cars during qualifying. Indeed, the first four rows of the grid are quite unusual . Furthermore, it's usually remarkably to see such a gap between team-mates. We will see in the race if this has something to do with different strategies as well as validate our true qualifying pace in the race tomorrow."

Ralf Schumacher: 4th
Chassis: FW25 07
Best time: 1:21.727min

Juan Pablo Montoya: 7th
Chassis: FW25 06
(T-car FW 04)
Best time: 1:22.214min

-williams-