Williams aims to speed up development

The BMW WilliamsF1 Team is aiming at improving the WilliamsF1 BMW FW26, with the speed of development being of major importance, according to Sam Michael.

Now the three long haul races have come to an end, the BMW WilliamsF1 Team has the opportunity to completely focus on further developing the WilliamsF1 BMW FW26. The team's engineers are certain the car doesn't have any fundamental weaknesses, so the entire team are concentrating on finding a way to exploit the full potential of the FW26 as quickly as possible.

"This year will really be about how fast you can develop," explains WilliamsF1's Chief Operations Engineer, Sam Michael, "I hope Ferrari cannot develop its car as we can because we already have that gap. They'll still be developing as well and therefore we have to develop twice as fast."

At the Barcelona test last week, Ralf Schumacher, Marc Gené and Scott Dixon tested some new components and completed extensive tyre evaluations. This week, from Wednesday, the team will continue testing at the Paul Ricard Circuit.

Despite a slow start last year, the BMW WilliamsF1 Team succeeded in closing the gap to Ferrari and was strong enough to win races from mid-season, beginning with Juan Pablo's victory at Monaco. "I wouldn't say last year was easy," added Michael, "Last year it was very difficult at the start of the year because we were so far behind. You could say it was easier to find the performance because there was such a big difference."

In its efforts to improve the performance of the FW26, the team is investigating all areas of the car. Michael explains why these investigations are so important, "I've said this a million times, but the worst thing you can do is focus on one thing. It comes from everything," he said.

The BMW WilliamsF1 Team will use the time until the next round of the World Championship, the San Marino Grand Prix, which takes place at Imola on 25th April, to work flat-out on optimising the interaction of all components of the car.

-williams-