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Australian Grand Prix - RACE 7th March 2004 |
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Written by Jeff Seabrook
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Monday March 08, 2004 |
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Weather: dry, overcast, air temperature 18-19°C track temperature 23-25°C
Melbourne (AUS). Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya finished 5th and 6th respectively in the season opening Australian GP, in Melbourne. After the first race the BMW WilliamsF1 Team is second in the Constructors Championship with 9 points behind the race winning Ferrari team.
Ralf Schumacher: 4th
Chassis: FW26 03
Best time: 1:25.824 min (lap 11, 5th)
Of course I cannot be happy with today's result, even if, after all, I have made up four places from my starting position and I have collected some points for the team. We were on a good strategy and the team did an excellent job in the pits. Worrying is the fact is that at this race, we are missing one second from Ferrari, which I didn't expect and I believe this is down mainly to the design of their car as well as to some tyre graining for us, which we have to overcome. The whole of our package needs to improve slightly and this is going to take maybe a couple of races, but I am confident we can make it.
Juan Pablo Montoya: 5th
Chassis: FW26 05
Best time: 1:25,286 min (lap 42, 4th)
I didn't take advantage at all of my third place on the grid, since right after the start I was trying to defend my position from Alonso and I went off track, losing four places. After that, I spent my race trying to find the right moment to overtake the cars in front of me but that was no easy job, since the balance of my car wasn't ideal and on top of that I had quite a lot of tyre graining. I also experienced a problem with my right rear wheel during my third pit-stop which lost me some more time.
Sam Michael (Chief Operations Engineer, WilliamsF1):
Juan obviously had a big moment in the first corner and lost some positions. Then he spent the rest of the race making up from there. Meanwhile, Ralf gained two places at the start. Our performance today was not really enough compared to Ferrari or Renault but it is far from a bad result either. We have got both cars in the points and we come away from Australia with second place in the championship. Now we are looking forward to the hot tracks in Malaysia and Bahrain.
Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director):
The result does not really match our expectations, especially not the size of the gap to Ferrari. Ferrari proved that they remain the leading team. Like we did last year, we will work very hard in order to improve our package during the season. Both the BMW P84 engines have passed with flying colours, the first weekend under the new rules, without any problems. We did not pose any limitation of mileage in free practice. All in all we recorded 1,294 kilometres during this weekend. Neither in qualifying nor in the race did we need to reduce the revs of our engines.
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