A few weeks ago Williams-BMW set a scintillating pace during a test session at Barcelona, but on Sunday Juan-Pablo Montoya and Ralf Schumacher had no answer to Ferrari’s speed.
A few weeks ago Williams-BMW set a scintillating pace during a test session at Barcelona, but on Sunday Juan-Pablo Montoya and Ralf Schumacher had no answer to Ferrari’s speed.
Both Williams-BMWs struggled with poor handling throughout the weekend of the Spanish Grand Prix. The team had a mediocre grand prix by its own standards – Montoya finished a distant fourth and Schumacher a lap down in fifth after an off-track excursion.
Either way, the nine points scored by Montoya and Schumacher moved Williams-BMW a point closer to Renault in fourth place in the constructors’ points table and left the drivers sixth and seventh respectively in the drivers’ title chase
“The car was quite difficult to drive initially,” said Montoya, “and I decided to pace myself in order to get to the end of the race. We’d balanced the car in a different way than usual and it was therefore more difficult to drive. However, towards the end of the race, when there was more grip on the track and tyres worked better, the car felt pretty good.”
Schumacher seemed to have more of a handling problem, especially in the closing laps: “After all the testing we’ve done at this track, we thought that we could achieve a better result. When I went off the circuit a part of my bodywork got ripped off, causing my car to oversteer. In the last 16 laps I had a hard but fair fight with (Toyota driver) Cristiano da Matta.”
Williams-BMW chief operations engineer Sam Michael said the accidents at the start of the race had prompted the team to change its race tactics: “After the safety car had come out right after the start we changed our pit strategy from three to two stops. This was a close call, particularly with Ralf and he may have done better on a three-stopper.”