Malaysian GP Williams Friday notes

Weather: Hot and humid. Air temperature 33C average. Track temperature 43C average.

BMW WilliamsF1 Team driver Ralf Schumacher was 10th in the first Free Practice sessions of the 2001 Malaysian Grand Prix. It was quite an unlucky day for Juan Pablo Montoya who could achieve only a handful of laps due to several technical problems.

Ralf Schumacher
"I had some set-up problems today. The car was oversteering in many corners, which still gives us some work for tomorrow. It wasn't a tyre induced problem though, the reason for the imbalance lies in the set-up of the car. As I didn't suffer any technical problems we could complete all the to-do-list on my car and test what we had planned."

Juan Pablo Montoya
"It looked like every problem was falling on me today. First a fuel problem, than an electrical problem. We changed the battery and some more bits but in the end this didn't help. I don't know this track at all and I really needed to learn it. From what I could see the circuit is better than what I thought, mainly because it's really very wide. "

Patrick Head (Technical Director, WilliamsF1)
"We lost a lot of track time with several problems on Juan Pablo's car with a leak from the fuel pump this morning which disguised the fact that there was also what looks like an alternator problem, that was found this afternoon. Disappointing for Juan Pablo who needs mileage on this track but we covered many laps with Ralf's car and have done a number of back-to-backs collecting a lot of data to look at this evening, in order to decide our set up for tomorrow and the race."

Dr Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director)
"Whilst the engine in Ralf's car ran trouble-free the whole morning allowing him to work on the set-up according to his programme, Juan Pablo suffered a number of technical problems. He could achieve just one lap in the morning due to a mechanical fuel pump problem and on the fourth lap of the second session he had an electrical black-out. It looks like it could be an alternator defect but we are analysing the reason for that."

- Williams F1