22/07/2005
NEWS STORY
On the first day of the German GP weekend the BMW WilliamsF1 Team concentrated as usual on tyre choice and set-up for the race. Both drivers completed their working programmes including set-ups for different weather conditions, should today's cold temperatures persist for the rest of the weekend.
Mark Webber: I feel like I could be in for another tough weekend here, as today has been a difficult day for me. We must find some more pace. Besides going through our normal programme we also worked on the possibility of having rain in the next days. We have collected a lot of useful information and we are going to look through all of the data tonight.
Nick Heidfeld: It's still early days but I think that from what I have seen so far we have made a step forward compared to the last two races. In the morning session, when the temperature was still low, we struggled a bit with the grip, as did many other cars. During today's sessions we've completed an intensive evaluation of the tyre choice for this weekend. The session ran smoothly but just in my last outing the car felt a bit strange and this is also what we'll be looking into with the engineers later on.
Sam Michael (Technical Director, WilliamsF1): It was a productive day in terms of set-up and tyre runs. We have made some improvements to the MKII bodywork since Silverstone and they are all confirmed and working. Now we will concentrate on tuning the set-up for tomorrow's qualifying. It looks like the weather will remain cool for the weekend.
Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director): We didn't experience any reliability problems on either car today, which allowed both our drivers to complete their scheduled programmes. Besides working on the tyre choice, the main focus was about verifying the changes of last week. The set- up work is still not finished and we hope to improve our lap times significantly.