A smooth start for the BMW Sauber F1 Team. The three BMW Sauber F1.06s of Nick Heidfeld, Jacques Villeneuve and Robert Kubica performed flawlessly on the first practice day for the Bahrain Grand Prix. Robert set the fastest time of the trio, since he had the advantage of driving many laps in his role as the third driver.

Robert Kubica: I think we had a good day, and I managed to do a lot of tyre testing. I picked up a puncture at one stage, which interrupted progress, but we still collected a lot of useful information. My impression is that the circuit is easier to drive with the V8 engine, because the two quickest corners are flat out now.

Nick Heidfeld: It’s great to get going properly at last, and I really enjoyed the second practice session. The morning was kind of boring, because I just did one installation lap. On a technical level, the car worked well, and we were able to collect a lot of data from the third car for analysis this afternoon.

Jacques Villeneuve: I only did a few laps today just to get a feeling for the car. For most of the time I was out there, there was a yellow flag. We just started working on the set-up and we have a fair bit left to do tomorrow.

Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director): We are happy that the 2006 season finally started. My compliments to the whole team who worked the last eight months in preparation for this event. The first impression is positive. Apart from the puncture on Robert’s car, everything went to schedule.

Willy Rampf (Technical Director Chassis): We were able to complete our programme virtually without any technical problems, which was a good start. Nick and Jacques both just did a baseline run each in order to gather some data for tomorrow. Robert’s task was to evaluate the two different tyre options, and I have to say that he did a very good job and was able to provide us with a lot of valuable data as a basis for the remainder of the weekend.