BMW WilliamsF1 Team Reactions British Qualifying

By BMW WilliamsF1 Team
July 9 2005

Reactions .... British GP Qualifying

Although the BMW WilliamsF1 Team has made progress with its major aerodynamic upgrades to the FW27 since the French Grand Prix, much work is still required to draw the expected performance from the new developments. As a consequence, drivers Mark Webber & Nick Heidfeld endured a difficult qualifying session today and both drivers will start tomorrow's British Grand Prix from outside of the top ten.

Mark Webber 12th (1.21.997 min) Chassis: FW27 05 (T-car FW27 04) / BMW P84/5 engine: 1st GP "Nick and I are still not quick enough. We really need to find more grip. We will be conducting some more investigation over the weekend and we have decided to run the cars in two different set-ups to compare the data. We hope we will get it right for Hockenheim. We've got to work hard, even if it's not easy at the moment."

Nick Heidfeld 14th (1.22,117 min) Chassis: FW27 06 / BMW P84/5 engine: 1st GP "Together we decided that I would use the old aerodynamics package today. We tried various things yesterday and in the end I said I would like to go for it and try to see how the old configuration behaved. Today the old and the new packages seemed quite similarly. It is also true that the other teams have improved their cars, and of course we haven't been developing our old package. We know it's a bit of a drastic decision to change the car midway through a GP weekend, but we struggled quite a lot in France and again yesterday, so last night we took this decision."

Dr Mario Theissen BMW Motorsports Director "Today's qualifying result reflects the situation last weekend in Magny-Cours. This was to be expected without any testing that could help us make a step forward. The package in this form is not good enough to achieve a top placing but maybe with some luck we can score some points this weekend. On the engine side we had no problems."

Sam Michael Chief Operations Engineer WilliamsF1 "The new bodywork, introduced in Magny-Cours, is a result of our aggressive development programme, which to date has delivered significant competitive gains. However, pushing hard sometimes means problems will arise. We continue to work at the factory and on track to find performance. For the British GP, the drivers have taken different directions. Mark will run the new configuration while Nick has decided to rely on a more conservative but validated bodywork configuration. We have a good strategy for the race and we look forward to the battle tomorrow."