Canadian GP: Williams Friday qualifying notes

In the first very wet qualifying session of the season so far, Juan Pablo Montoya and Ralf Schumacher came 12th and 15th respectively. Therefore, they will start Saturday's Final Qualifying session for the 2003 Canadian Grand Prix from 6th and 9th positions.

Juan Pablo Montoya:

"Not really the ideal condition for a qualifying lap, today. We decided to go for the full wet tyre at the very last minute after we saw the other Michelin drivers who had started before me were struggling on shallow wet tyres, but it wasn't good either because it was raining too hard. I had poor grip and the handling of the car was very difficult. We can work on this and improve our car for tomorrow, when track conditions could possibly be very different. Anyway, this is what we've got at the moment."

Ralf Schumacher:

"I was quite unlucky in my fast lap, as just before I went out onto the track it started to rain even harder. If you compare my times to those of Jarno Trulli who ran right after me, he was three seconds slower, so it is easy to figure out just how difficult it was to keep the car on the track in that phase. In the morning's free prectice, when it started raining hard, I was actually one of the quickest. This means that we should be capable of being competitive in such weather conditions, even if this wasn't evident in today's qualifying."

Sam Michael (Chief Operations Engineer, WilliamsF1):

"When Juan was running he locked up the wheels into turn 7 and that cost him about one and a half seconds. He was running in quite difficult conditions. Then when Ralf was out on track it looked as if the rain was a bit heavier, but anyway these could be the conditions we are going to have for the weekend and we've got a bit of work to do on the set-up for tomorrow."

Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director):

"The decisive factors in this qualifying session were obviously the wheather, the very little time one had to set up the car for these conditions and of course the tyres. Our two drivers used different tyres, Ralf the shallow wet, Juan Pablo the full wet, but the result was similar. Neither of them is really happy with their times."

Juan Pablo Montoya: 12th
Chassis: FW25 06
Spare car: FW 04
Best time: 1.37,479 min

Ralf Schumacher: 15th
Chassis: FW25 05
Best time: 1.38,210 min

-williams-