Hungarian GP: Williams Friday notes

The BMW WilliamsF1 Team's first Free Practice session ran according to plan in preparation for the Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest. Ralf Schumacher was 3rd while Juan Pablo Montoya only managed 16th after exiting into a gravel trap on a fast lap at the end of the session.

Ralf Schumacher

"Our Friday tasks went alright, but you cannot read too much into the Free Practice times, whether you are third or last. We have gone through our set-up programme and we have already made our tyre choice. I think that in the race that Ferrari will be superior to every team, but for us it is important to keep an eye on McLaren."

Juan Pablo Montoya

"We are suffering from low grip levels and I cannot say my day went well. However we have completed some preparation work for the race and now we will concentrate on our grid position, which is very important here."

Sam Michael (Chief Operations Engineer, WilliamsF1):

"We had no reliability problems today. We spent both the sessions evaluating the tyre and now the tyre choice is very clear. We concentrated on the set up as we were struggling quite a bit with the balance but towards the end of the session we found some good corrections. For our technicians and engineers there is quite a lot of work to do on Saturday and Sunday as we are far off from where we wanted to be."

Gerhard Berger (BMW Motorsport Director):

"There is no doubt this is a track with poor levels of grip, and on Friday it is still dusty and dirty, and there are usually a lot of spins. You only get the real picture on Saturday. On this track the quicker driver is the one who has the right tyre. It is quite difficult to predict how the starting grid will look, but for tomorrow's qualifying we are aiming for the second or third row."

Ralf Schumacher: 3rd
Chassis: FW24 06
Best time: 1.17,228 min

Juan Pablo Montoya: 16th
Chassis: FW24 05
(T-Car FW24 02)
Best time: 1.18,961 min

-williams-