14/05/2006
NEWS STORY
Nick Heidfeld finished 8th in the Spanish Grand Prix and this result means the new BMW Sauber F1 Team has now collected world championship points from four of the six races to date. Jacques Villeneuve started at the very back of the grid in 22nd but managed to work his way up to 12th.
Nick Heidfeld: I am very happy. The goals we set for ourselves were to be in the top ten in qualifying and in the points in the race, and we achieved both of these. For me it is very important to be back to normal again. The steps we have taken are working and obviously we found what the problems were from Imola and the Nürburgring. My start wasn't good, but I was able to defend tenth and the balance of the car was okay for the entire race distance. It was important to overtake Rubens Barrichello. At this point in the race his car was heavy and mine was light. If he had held me off I would not have made it into the points, but I overtook him on the outside in turn one, which is always fun.
Jacques Villeneuve: I had a good start, but the two Super Aguris had amazing starts and then there were cars in front and there was nowhere to go. It was a question of braking late. I was next to David Coulthard, but then he pushed me wide a little bit, which was fair. Then I lost six seconds in the first two or three laps, and that was it. We could not do too much today, the best I think we could have hoped for was tenth without the start difficulties. Our pace was good in the race, and we have a lot of mileage left on our engine for Monaco, so we can do a lot of laps and we should be quick there.
Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director): As usual in Barcelona it was a race with not a lot of overtaking and this time with not a lot of incidents either. Our drivers with their different strategies had problem free and mistake free races. Nick managed to go from tenth to eighth and collected one important point. Jacques made up ten positions and came in 12th with his one stop strategy. During this season we have collected points in four out of six races and we are satisfied with this.
Willy Rampf (Technical Director Chassis): This was a good race for us with both cars finishing trouble free. Jacques started 22nd but got stuck behind slower cars for quite a while. After he was by them he made up many positions despite a heavy car. He drove a good race and expecting better than 12th was not realistic. Nick started from tenth and had a very consistent race pace, thus enabling us to gain one position thanks to our strategy on a circuit where overtaking is difficult.
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