Williams Magny-Cours testing recap

MAGNY-COURS TEST - Day Two (of Three)
4th March 2001

Weather - Wet track all day.
Average air temperature 12°C.
Av. track temp. 12°C.

The BMW WilliamsF1 Team today resumed the second day of testing at Magny-Cours. Juan Pablo Montya joined test driver Marc Gene, and they drove the FW23 and FW22B respectively. Both the drivers will continue testing tomorrow, which is the last day.

Juan Pablo Montoya
"I haven't driven in Magny-Cours since testing for WilliamsF1 in 1998 in the FW20 and it's nice to drive on this track again. Today we've been testing some aero-components, and did some wet tyre testing in the FW23. I am looking forward to some dry running tomorrow morning."

Marc Gene
"With 91 laps on a wet track, we completed today the mileage scheduled for the engine. We also completed the Michelin testing schedule on wet tyres."

Sam Michael (WilliamsF1 Chief Operation Engineer)
"Today we concentrated on wet tyre testing with both cars and software work, such as launch control and traction control, with both Juan Pablo (FW23) and Marc (FW22B) achieving considerable mileage. As the track was wet all day we ran a lot of wet and inte rmediate tyre compounds and constructions. We're working very hard with Michelin to make some progress in this area. Today we didn't experience any reliability or mechanical problems at all. It looks like tomorrow it will be dry in the morning and again we t in the afternoon, which will allow us to do further tyre testing. Juan Pablo will be concentrating on endurance running and a race simulation in the FW23."

Dr Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director)
"I am very happy that each of the cars completed nearly 400 km, which is far more than a race distance. Because of the wet track, we had excellent conditions for improving our traction control and we made a few steps forward although. We are not perfect ye t and we have a lot more of work to do. We didn't suffer any technical problems."

<pre> Complete list of times/no. of laps: Time Laps

Jean Alesi              Prost                   1:23.710        55
Kimi Raikkonen          Sauber                  1:23.711        65
JP Montoya (FW23)       WilliamsF1 BMW          1:25.021        87
Marc Gene (FW22B)       WilliamsF1 BMW          1:26.175        91
Jos Verstappen          Arrows Asiatech         1:27.514        54

-Williams-