04/03/2005
NEWS STORY
On the first Friday of the 2005 F1 season Mark Webber and Nick Heidfeld had two uneventful practice sessions for the Australian Grand Prix with both the drivers achieving reasonable mileage.
Nick Heidfeld: It's been a better fist day than I had expected after the winter testing. I only had a small electronic issue this morning that slightly delayed my programme and prevented me from completing all the laps that we had planned. In the afternoon everything went according to plan and it was a nice finish to this first day.
Mark Webber: We've got the first free practice sessions out of the way, which is always a good thing to do at the start of the season and we have now completed our tyre comparison. In the second session we had a small problem with the fuel system of the car and we lost some time there but the mechanics got it fixed pretty quickly. We spent our time mainly testing tyres and also saving the engine for the race and the next race weekend. We're on the way and so far, so good.
Sam Michael (Technical Director, WilliamsF1): It's good to start the first race weekend of the season. On both cars we spent the day evaluating tyre compounds and race set-up. On Mark's car we had a problem with the fuel pressure sensor which cost him some time in the second session. Generally we are about where we expected to be. Now we are concentrating on the set up for qualifying but the forecast looks like it will be a full wet day tomorrow.
Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director): We are happy with our Friday's practice. The most important work was the choice of the right tyre compound. Therefore both the drivers concentrated on long runs in order to compare the different tyres under race conditions. For this tyre evaluation we didn't use our full engine rev potential, but we didn't limit the lap numbers. Both our drivers achieved more mileage than the average of the other teams.