European GP qualifying - BMW WilliamsF1 Team

European Grand Prix - QUALIFYING 23rd June 2001

Weather: Air temperature 16°C average. Track temperature 26°C average.

For the second time this year the BMW WilliamsF1 Team have second and third 
on the grid. The first was in Austria, but this time the roles are reversed 
with Ralf Shumacher in front of Juan Pablo Montoya. At the European Grand 
Prix in Nurburgring Ralf will start alongside his brother, Michael, on the 
front row of the grid for the third time.

Ralf Schumacher
Position: 2nd
Chassis: FW23 05
Best Time: 1:15.226
"We can be very satisfied having both cars in the top three. It is nice being 
on the front row again with Michael, but I am working on swapping places with 
him and hope soon to get my first pole. Over the entire weekend the car was 
better than expected, even though the race is not going to be easy for us. We 
hope for higher temperatures which, as everyone knows, helps our tyres."

Juan Pablo Montoya
Position: 3rd
Chassis: FW23 06
Best Time: 1:15.490
"We had a pretty good qualifying today, here we had no failures and things 
are going really well. We did a couple of changes at the end of the session 
to the car and they didn't really pay off, but we had to try. The car is 
working well although I had a bit too much oversteer to really push it. 
However, we had a fairly good day in total today and now I will try to get to 
the end tomorrow."

Patrick Head (Technical Director, WilliamsF1)
"I think Ralf and Juan Pablo have both done a good job. We are probably in 
better grid positions than we expected before the weekend. We are happy with 
our choice of Michelin tyres and today's result shows they are making 
progress."

Gerhard Berger (BMW Motorsport Director)
"I am very happy with our positions. It was an exciting qualifying with an 
excellent result - my compliments to both drivers. Even though we were second 
on the grid in Montreal, today's result means progress as this is a 
medium-speed circuit and we have not been as competitive on these. This shows 
every step we are currently making produces results. The teamwork by the 
relatively new combination of BMW, WilliamsF1, Michelin and the drivers is 
impressive."

Current high-resolution photographs may be downloaded from the BMW Press Club 
at www.press.bmwgroup.com (registration at any time).

Media contact:

WilliamsF1
Anne Bradshaw
Tel: +44 79 772 75 838

BMW
Guido Stalmann
Tel: +49(0) 170 5666 112
guido.stalmann@bmw.de

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Sylvia Proudfoot
spur07@cs.com
403 287 3945