BMW WilliamsF1 ahead in reliability

After a successful 2001 season BMW continued their engine development and for 2002 the team had the use of the new BMW P82 V10 engine. This new engine would prove to be a major factor in the teams success.

In the BMW manufactured P82 engine the team had a powerful yet reliable engine. This would enable the BMW WilliamsF1 Team to sit on top of the reliability rankings.

With a total amount of 1963 laps driven using the P82 engine in the back of the WilliamsF1 FW24 it has completed over ninety percent of all possible laps and a distance of 9250 kilometres, which is 153 kilometres more than Ferrari or even 1114 kilometres more than McLaren-Mercedes has on the record.

Compared with 200, the team has increased their performance in kilometres driven by over 2000. Playing a great part in this improvement was Juan Pablo Montoya. In 2001 Juan Pablo was only seventeenth in terms of the reliability rankings last year, whereas in 2002 he finished second.

In addition to its excellent reliability the P82 engine would become the centre of much discussion when it was announced that a development of the engine would be the first engine to surpass the 19,000 revs per minute mark. This increase in performance would see Juan Pablo Montoya set the fastest Formula One lap recorded in the qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix. Montoya's lap time of 1m:20.264 corresponded to an average speed of 259.827 km/h.

BMW Motorsport Directors Mario Theissen and Gerhard Berger had this to say of the 2002 season and the P82 engine: “The P82 proved itself to be a worthy successor of the P80 and was, like his predecessor, judged by the experts as strongest engine in the field. The team's strength evidently confirms Munich as the Formula One base and the competence of BMW. We are following the right path."