WillaimsF1 Barcelona test - day two

BARCELONA TEST (Day Two of Two)
22nd February 2001

Weather:
Dry and Sunny
Average air temperature 18.5"C; average track temperature 39°C.

The BMW WilliamsF1 Team made good use of its second and last day of testing in Barcelona. As yesterday, Juan Pablo Montoya was 3n duty in the sole FW23 present at the track, which will leave for Australia on Sunday, as the team's spare chassis. The scheduled programme was completed and the technicians could collect last valuable data before the 2001 racing season's kick off, next week in Melbourne.

Juan Pablo Montoya
"This has been an important two-day test for us. It allowed us to make some last minute changes and checks to the car before we leave for Melbourne. The main aim has been working on the brakes and doing temperature and endurance runs on the engine. I am looking forward to my first Grand PI ix with the BMW WilliamsF1 Team. It's been a very demanding winter test period for everybody involved and I hope we are well placed to make good use of our work this time next week, in Melbourne."

Sam Michael (Chief Operations Engineer)
"We did some tyre work for Melbourne today but unfortunately we couldn't spend too much time on set-up. This was because we concentrated mainly on systems checks for the Australian Grand Prix and that was a priority over set-up work. Our aim this season is to close the points deficit with Ferrari and McLaren Mercedes and the team has done an enormous amount of work into the winter test period, probably more work compared to any other year leading into a new season. Difficult at this stage to make any predictions until we :et to Australia but the feeling is certainly good and we hope we're well placed to exploit the good work that has been put in by the team."

Gerhard Berger (BMW Motorsport Director)
"Today has been our last day of track preparation for Melbourne. There are still some tasks to work on but we are quite confident that we are prepared for the season's opening in Australia. Although we were testing together with McLaren Mercedes here in Barcelona, it's still very difficult to know exactly where we are standing because we don't know under which conditions the other cars were running, in terms of tyre, of fuel and set-up configuration."

Mika Hakkinen McLaren Mercedes 1 : 20.454 Laps 82
Alexander Wurz McLaren Mercedes 1 : 20.491 Laps84
Juan Pablo Montoya WilliamsF1 BMW 1: 22.007 Laps75

- WillaimsF1