German GP: Williams race notes

A strong performance from the BMW WilliamsF1 Team at the German Grand Prix in Hockenheim: Juan Pablo Montoya and Ralf Schumacher finished second and third respectively behind World Champion Michael Schumacher.

Juan Pablo Montoya

"Of course I didn't expect to come second, it happened thanks to the misfortune of Rubens and Ralf, but this is racing and such things happen. This is my best result in seven races in spite of the fact that I was on pole for five races. The fight with Raikkonen was very entertaining. After he passed me at the start I had a few chances to overtake him, but it was too risky and I preferred waiting. Then the team told me I could make it and pumped my revs up, which gave me some additional power. I had good acceleration and Raikkinen did as well but then he made a mistake and I got past."

Ralf Schumacher

"If I look at all the problems I had today I should be happy to have finished third. A couple of things went wrong today. First Trulli held me up then I was slowed down by Villeneuve when I was approaching the pits and finally I had an additional stop to top up the pressurised air for the pneumatic valve drive of the engine. Anyway, positions two and three are a good result for the team."

Patrick Head (Technical Director, WilliamsF1):

"Obviously we have had a much better performance today than in recent races. We have made a lot of progress during the last week after the French Grand Prix. I would like to thank the engineers and mechanics at the race-track as well as all the people back at the factory in Grove for all of their efforts."

Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director):

"We have been quite strong this weekend and achieved a very good race result. Apart from seeing both of our drivers on the podium I am happy that after a long time we were able to keep Ferrari's pace again. Ralf and Juan both drove strong races without making any mistakes. To enable Juan to get past Kimi Raikkonen on lap 11 we gave him more revs for a while. With just four laps to go we had to call Ralf in for another pit stop. We had to refill air into the pneumatic valve system of the engine and we will now have to analyse why the air consumption was higher than normal."

Juan Pablo Montoya: 2nd
Chassis: FW24 05
Fastest Lap: 1:16.693 on lap 33 (3rd overall)

Ralf Schumacher: 3rd
Chassis: FW24 06
Fastest Lap: 1:16,513 lap 47 (2nd overall)

-williams-