San Marino GP: Williams Saturday qualifying notes

The BMW WilliamsF1 Team drivers Juan Pablo Montoya and Ralf Schumacher qualified 3rd and 5th respectively for the San Marino Grand Prix after having topped the times in the pre-qualifying session.

Juan Pablo Montoya:

"I am very pleased with today's result even if we did not equal the pre-qualifying session's positions as we were on a different fuel level, we have an excellent race car and this is what matters. We were able to improve the car from yesterday and we are now in a good position to start the race. Jenson put in a very good lap and also BAR and Honda have given him a better car with a better engine, this weekend. When I saw Jenson's time I thought: what time is Michael Schumacher then going to set? It was an exciting qualifying!"

Ralf Schumacher:

"On one hand I am not unhappy because I know I have made the most out of the car, but on the other hand we were struggling with a couple of minor problems throughout the weekend and could not get rid of them completely. However I am pretty confident for the race as I believe my car is very well prepared. By the way, congratulations to Jenson on his first pole!"

Sam Michael (Chief Operations Engineer, WilliamsF1):

"It was not a bad qualifying today. We have made a couple of changes overnight which improved the balance of the cars for today. We have a good race set-up on both cars, so we are looking forward to tomorrow's race. Reliability wise everything has been fine so far, but over the race distance the circuit will be very demanding on brakes."

Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director):

"We have witnessed an exciting qualifying today with an unexpected result. Congratulations to Jenson Button and BAR who have achieved their very first pole position. We have decided our qualifying strategy in relation to the fact that the circuit becomes faster during the sessions. So positions three and five in the end are good results. We did not experience any technical problems."

Juan Pablo Montoya: 3rd
Chassis: FW26 05
Best time: 1:20.212 min

Ralf Schumacher: 5th
Chassis: FW26 07
(T-car FW02)
Best time: 1:20.538 min

-williams-