San Marino
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San Marino GP - Race
04/20/2003
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Weather: dry, air 19°C,
track 21°C |
Imola (ITA). 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.
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.
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Ralf Schumacher: 4th Chassis:
FW25 02
Best time: 1.23,265 min (lap 29, 6h)
(Comments after qualifying second): After
the first sector, where I was not very fast, I thought my qualifying lap was
compromised, but then surprisingly I made it. I must say thanks to the t-car
team as they did a very good job getting my car ready which I had to use
after the mistake I made this morning. We have been very strong so far here
and I hope the weekend continues like this. |
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Juan Pablo Montoya:
7th Chassis: FW25 04
Best time: 1.22.946 min (lap 32, 4th)
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. |
Sam Michael
(Chief Operations Engineer, WilliamsF1): |
Gerhard Berger
(BMW Motorsport Director): |
| 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. |
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. |
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