WilliamsF1 Team Comments: Friday Qualifying

By Andrew Hooper
April 5 2003

	Brazilian GP Friday - Team Comments
	A very wet track and changing weather conditions influenced today’s first qualifying for the Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos. This was the first wet qualifying session since the new FIA rules came into force and it mixed up the field quite a bit for tomorrow’s starting positions. The BMW WilliamsF1 Team drivers Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya will start tomorrow’s final qualifying session in fourth and eighth positions.
	Juan Pablo Montoya "I lost the rear of the car on the asphalt change, locked the rear tyres at turn six and went off track losing quite a bit of time. I obviously lost my flying lap there. The car felt quite bad on the new asphalt in the infield, anyway. Let’s hope for some dry running tomorrow."
	Ralf Schumacher "It’s very difficult to rate today’s times. Qualifying was a weather lottery. Usually I don’t dislike driving in wet conditions but on my fast lap the track was extremely slippery after it had again started raining hard a few minutes before. The balance of my car was not right in the slow and medium-speed sectors, but this is something we are going to work on now."
	Dr Mario Theissen BMW Motorsports Director "Today’s qualifying was ruled by weather conditions. In the first 30 minutes the track was so wet that the drivers were forced to drive as if they were running on ice. Juan Pablo drove over the limit and lost quite a bit of time as he went off track. Unfortunately Ralf was out on the track right when it was soaking wet. This cost him a better position. After the break the track conditions were better so that several drivers could qualify at the top."
	Sam Michael Chief Operations Engineer WilliamsF1 "It is difficult to say where everybody is, due to the fact the weather and track conditions were changing during qualifying. Our positions to start from tomorrow are disappointing, of course. We have a lot of new chassis parts but we are not able to evaluate them under these conditions but we hope we can achieve this tomorrow morning."