BMW WilliamsF1 Team Reactions Friday Practice

By BMW WilliamsF1 Team
July 8 2005

Reactions ... British GP Friday Practice

The BMW WilliamsF1 Team had two very busy Free Practice session this morning, working hard to find improvements in the car following the release of the new bodywork at last weekend’s French Grand Prix. The team have begun to find some positive improvements but have plenty of data to assess overnight to prepare the car for tomorrow’s qualifying.

Mark Webber Chassis: FW27 05 (Spare car FW27 04) / BMW P84/5 engine: 1st GP 1st Practice: 15th (1:23.394 min) 2nd Practice: 12th (1:21.235 min) "We had a pretty tough day and went through an intensive programme trying to find a reasonable balance for this track, while taking into consideration all the information we collected in Magny-Cours last week. We are setting ourselves a target which is achievable, in terms of improvement. We are still ticking a lot of boxes and trying to see how we can make our performance better. We are nowhere near where we want to be at the moment but I am confident we’ll take some good decisions tonight."

Nick Heidfeld Chassis: FW27 06 / BMW P84/5 engine: 1st GP 1st Practice: 16th (1:24.321 min) 2nd Practice: 18th (1.22.500 min) "The morning session was very difficult as lap times indicate. I had poor levels of grip, as it takes some time for the tyre to heat up. We made a few changes both before and during the second session which seemed to improve the car. We have tried a lot of things around today which means we’ll have a lot of data to go through this evening to decide what to do tomorrow."

Dr Mario Theissen BMW Motorsports Director "After the difficult weekend we had in Magny-Cours, today’s sessions were dominated by an intensive set-up programme. No doubt we could have benefited from a test between these two Grands Prix. Now the challenge will be to improve the set-up for Saturday with the data we have collected today. There were no problems on the engine side."

Sam Michael Chief Operations Engineer WilliamsF1 "We have been struggling with grip this morning, but we are starting to get some direction now. We still have a lot of work to do. We will look at the data tonight and see what decisions we will take for tomorrow."