Wrong brake decision for Williams

Williams admits it made an error of judgement at the Spanish Grand Prix that caused Juan Pablo Montoya to retire with brake problems. After scoring Williams' first front row start of the season, the Colombian struggled with the brakes from early in the race and finally experienced a failure when he came in for a pit stop, which forced him to retire.

Sam Michael.

Photo by Sutton Motorsport Images.

"We made a decision to go for much smaller (brake) ducts, to try and get some more aerodynamic performance out of the car, and really it was wrong," said chief operations engineer Sam Michael. "Every circuit is hard on brakes these days because you are always pushing everything as far as you can, but here we just stepped over the limit, obviously."

Montoya's teammate Ralf Schumacher also had trouble with his brakes. He finished sixth but had to proceed cautiously. "I had to fight very early on with some brake problems, which meant I had to be very gentle on them until the end," said the German.

"I don't want to call it the team's fault. The team does its best to give us the best possible cars and I don't call it a mistake. It was just pushing it very far, a bit over the limit. But at least it was possible to finish the race."