WilliamsF1 Team Comments: San Marino GP

By Andrew Hooper
April 20 2003



	San Marino GP Race - Team Comments

	The San Marino Grand Prix didn't live up to the expectations of the BMW WilliamsF1 Team, after yesterday's strong qualifying. Ralf Schumacher finished fourth and team mate Juan Pablo Montoya was 7th after suffering a refuelling problem during one of his pit-stops. The team will conduct a test at Silverstone from 22-24 April, with Juan Pablo Montoya and Marc Gené present all days

	Juan Pablo Montoya "Definitely an unlucky race for me today. I lost some ground at the start as I was trying to find a corridor for overtaking on the cleaner side of the track. Then my race was decided at my second pit stop, when far too little fuel went into my car due to a problem with the fuel rig and I was forced to pit again immediately after. I pushed as much as I could hoping to gain some positions but in the third sector of the race I had some understeer and also I lost some time lapping slower cars."

	Ralf Schumacher BMW and WilliamsF1 would like to express their sympathy to Ralf and Michael Schumacher for the death of their mother. Ralf Schumacher left immediately after having run his race and was obviously not available for any comment.

	Gerhard Berger BMW Motorsports Director "We hoped for a podium finish today, but that was unfortunately not the case. A few things went wrong in the pit-stops. As well as the problem that Juan experienced with the fuel rig, Ralf selected the wrong gear when he restarted after his first pit-stop and lost some vital seconds there. Also Juan slightly missed the pit-stop area at one of his stops. However, it was clear today that the gap between the top teams is tight."

	Sam Michael Chief Operations Engineer WilliamsF1 "In general our chassis improvements became visible in Imola. However our race was hampered by a few things. We went for a three stop strategy which promised to be the quicker one, which is proven by the fact that the race winner stopped three times too. But this strategy does not leave any margin if anything goes wrong, and we had several problems at the pit stops, the worst one being a malfunctioning fuel rig."