WilliamsF1 Team Comments: Saturday Qualifying

By Andrew Hooper
May 18 2003

	Austrian GP Saturday - Team Comments
	The BMW WilliamsF1 Team will line up 3rd and 10th on tomorrow's grid for the Austrian Grand Prix. After spinning off during yesterday's first qualifying session, Ralf Schumacher has managed to reclaim some of ground conceded on Friday, but the team has been heartened by the 3rd fastest performance of Juan Pablo Montoya which augurs well for a positive performance from the team tomorrow.
	Juan Pablo Montoya "After following a different philosophy with our set-up today, we have been fairly consistent through practice, warm up and qualifying doing 1.09.3 laps, so I think this was as quick as the car could go in qualifying without taking any risks. It is difficult to know what fuel levels the other guys are on, but I am sure that we have a very good race set-up which will give us a strong race pace for tomorrow."
	Ralf Schumacher "After I had spun off during yesterday's first qualifying, today I had to cope with the disadvantage of being first on the track, and of course there is less grip at the start of the session. Although the car was quite well balanced by the end of this morning's practice, it wasn't quite right for qualifying and it felt a bit nervous. As a consequence, I could not get it together which was made worse by a little mistake I made early on when I lost some tenths in the first corner. So it wasn?t a good lap, and as a consequence, maybe I should not be too disappointed with my grid position. It is going to be a tough race here as overtaking is pretty difficult on this circuit."
	Dr Mario Theissen BMW Motorsports Director "All in all it was a good qualifying session for the team. Ralf had to cope with the handicap of being the roadsweeper, so we could not have expected much more than tenth place. Juan Pablo was very quick but unfortunately he did not get the first corner 100% correct, or he would have been fighting for pole today. However, 3rd is a good position from which to start the race."
	Sam Michael Chief Operations Engineer WilliamsF1 "With Juan, we are close to the front row and we are quite confident of both drivers having a good race tomorrow with the strategy we are on. We are looking forward to see how the cars will perform in the race."