18/03/2005
NEWS STORY
The Malaysian GP weekend kicked off today with the first and second Free Practice sessions, which were run in very hot weather conditions. Nick Heidfeld had a productive day, whereas Mark Webber's track time in the second session was limited to two laps due to a gear shifting problem.
Nick Heidfeld: It was a problem free Friday session for me and I managed to do everything we had planned. Several yellow flags and some traffic hampered the second session, but it was the same for everyone, after all. Looking at the final times of today, I am sure we are a lot quicker than it shows.
Mark Webber: Not an ideal day for me, but these things can happen. We had a gear shifting problem, which cost us the running in the second, most important session. Anyway, at least it looks like Nick collected some good information, which was the main objective, so now we can do our homework and be ready for tomorrow.
Sam Michael (Technical Director, WilliamsF1): After a good morning session, we had a gear change problem on Mark's car in the afternoon. We are now looking for what caused that problem. Nick continued with testing tyres and evaluating cooling configurations for Sunday's race. We have brought quite a lot aerodynamic improvements to the FW27 here and they are all working correctly. It is going to be a hard race here on cooling, engines, gearboxes and brakes, just a typical Malaysian Grand Prix.
Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director): Today's temperatures were just an appetizer of what is yet to come. On Sunday it should be even hotter. Not everything ran according to plan for us since Mark had a problem changing gears and missed the second session. Nick completed the tyre evaluation alone and only performed long runs in the second session. Both engines ran without problems and within the acceptable temperature limit.