San Marino GP: Williams Friday practice notes

On a nice Italian sunny day, the BMW WilliamsF1 Team drivers Juan Pablo Montoya and Ralf Schumacher were 7th and 10th fastest respectively at the end of the second Free Practice session for the San Marino Grand Prix.

Juan Pablo Montoya:

"I got almost the same position in the second session that I achieved in the first session but I must say the car has definitely improved from this morning. It became more drivable and more consistent, but there's still a lot of work to be done, as we need to improve our pace for Saturday. I am a bit surprised by the times achieved by some of the fastest drivers today, but we have to wait and see what happens in tomorrow's qualifying. The track will be quicker and we might take advantage of this hot weather."

Ralf Schumacher:

"First of all, I must say that for once I am not worried about not being at the top, since today we only concentrated on our job-list. We were able to go through our programme just as we wished to, with no problems at all. There is still room for improvement and I've got quite a lot of work ahead. Furthermore, the tyre choice will be crucial, even if I am sure we will make the right decision."

Sam Michael (Chief Operations Engineer, WilliamsF1):

"We have had a trouble free first day in terms of reliability, but we also have a lot of work to do tonight to improve the pace of the cars. We have enough good data to make our tyre choice. The weather is warmer than expected, which should be good for us."

Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director):

"During Free Practice, every team works on a different programme and this reflects again in the results. On Friday, some mainly focus on tyre choice, some others about the set-up. There was again no mileage limitation to our BMW engine today. On Friday we usually run with 1000 revs less compared to qualifying, because this is not an important factor when we are working on the tyre choice. We had no problems on the engine side, today."

Juan Pablo Montoya
Chassis: FW26 05
First session: 6th, 1:22.796
Second session: 7th, 1:21.661

Ralf Schumacher
Chassis: FW26 07
First session: 3rd, 1:22.250
Second session: 10th, 1:22.057

-williams-