Williams Jerez test summary 2004-02-11/15

The BMW WilliamsF1 Team completed a five day test at the Jerez de la Frontera circuit in Spain on Sunday. Team drivers Juan Pablo Montoya and Ralf Schumacher, as well as official test drivers, Marc Gené and Antonio Pizzonia, were all on hand to share testing duties, the Jerez test being the first for Antonio in his capacity as an official test driver for the team.

Under clear Spanish skies, the team spent the first three days concentrating on mechanical and aero set-up work of the FW26 in order to attain as much information as possible before the season opener in Melbourne in less than a month's time. For the last two days of the test, Antonio Pizzonia and Juan Pablo Montoya carried out intensive wet weather testing for tyre supplier, Michelin.

Sam Michael (Chief Operations Engineer, WilliamsF1):

"Today (Sunday) we finished five days of testing at Jerez, the last two in simulated wet conditions for tyre testing with Michelin. During the test, we worked through different traction control items and tyre testing as well as completing some final systems checks prior to Melbourne."

"Although we experienced some minor gearbox problems during the test, we believe we've made some good progress towards solving these. The performance of the FW26 is getting better, and we are now looking forward to the next test in Valencia where we will introduce some new parts we intend to run at the Australian Grand Prix."

"Once again, Michelin have done a good job with the dry weather tyres. We have selected one of our tyre choices for Melbourne and we will continue evaluating various compounds in Valencia to finalise our second choice. During the wet tyre testing we carried out in the last two days, we also validated two new wet tyre compounds with Michelin."

-williams-