Spanish GP: Williams Saturday notes

Both the drivers of the BMW WilliamsF1 Team, Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya will start from the second row of the grid for tomorrow's Spanish Grand Prix. After solid work from the team, both drivers benefited from improvements in their cars after yesterday's free practice sessions to dramatically improve their times.

Ralf Schumacher

"Yesterday we didn't expect to be where we are today, even if we looked maybe worse than how we actually were, because we were working towards the race. The team did a great job overnight, changing my car quite a lot, which allowed us to improve sensibly. We are pretty happy with the Michelin tyres and I think they look in good shape for tomorrow. It is also positive that Juan Pablo and myself are so close even if we are still too far away from Ferrari. Starting from these grid positions we can aim for points and possibly for a podium."

Juan Pablo Montoya

"If I think how qualifying started for me, I am absolutely happy with position four. Straight after leaving the garage for the first time I noticed an engine misfire and I had to switch to the T-Car. At the beginning it did not go too well with the spare car, but on my last lap I managed to put the best possible lap together. I don't know how it worked, but it definitely did!"

Sam Michael (Chief Operations Engineer, WilliamsF1):

"We are right behind the Ferraris, which was our realistic target for this circuit. The engineers and the drivers did a good job on the set-up to get both cars on the second row. This was a good effort from the whole team. We have some improvements for this race and they are working well but we are still focussing on the gap to Ferrari. Now we are looking forward to tomorrow when we believe we can have a competitive race."

Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director):

"We are very pleased to have both cars on the second row. Juan Pablo radioed that he had a misfire. There was no reason for this that we could see immediately on the data but instead of wasting any time we decided to switch to the T-Car. We had to focus on giving Juan the opportunity of three qualifying runs. Given these circumstances he did a brilliant job. For Ralf everything went according to plan and he too did a good job."

Ralf Schumacher: 3rd
Chassis: FW24 04
Best time: 1.17:277

Juan Pablo Montoya: 4th
Chassis: FW24 05 (T-Car FW24 02)
Best time: 1.17:425

-williams-