FW: BMW WilliamsF1 Team - Australian GP, Free Practice

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From: BMW Media <HHientzsch@aol.com>
To: Judy Stropus <jstropus@earthlink.net>
Subject: BMW WilliamsF1 Team - Australian GP, Free Practice
Date: Thu, Feb 28, 2002, 11:56 PM


Australian Grand Prix - FREE PRACTICE   1st March 2002

Weather:
Intermittent rain. Air temp. 17ƒC average. Track temperature 17ƒC average.

The BMW WilliamsF1 Team had quite a positive start in the first practice
sessions of the 2002 season, at the Australian Grand Prix. At the end of
the day Ralf Schumacher was third and Juan Pablo Montoya was fourth.

Ralf Schumacher                 Position:   3rd
Chassis:        FW24 04
Best Time:      1:28.821
We were a bit unlucky with the weather today. At the start of the first
session the track was wet and we had some rain later as well. A positive
thing was that I could test both the wet and the intermediate tyres.
Additionally I also tried the two types of
 dry tyre options and we have decided which weíre going to use for
tomorrow. Ferrari appears far away but I hope that we will be able to catch
up during the weekend.

Juan Pablo Montoya              Position:   4th
Chassis:        FW24 02
T-car:          FW24 01
Best Time:      1:28.870
The track was very slippery at the start, so it was quite difficult to
adjust the car to it. I suffered with oversteer in the first session and
understeer in the second and the intermittent rain did not help as the
conditions of the track were quickly chan
ging and werenít even consistent over the lap. We managed anyway to work on
the tyres and I think we have collected valuable data. Weíll see tomorrow.

Sam Michael (Chief Operations Engineer, WilliamsF1)
We had to start off with a wet session, which affected our normal Friday
plan. We did a lot of homework for the race, looked at two different tyres
checking the car in race conditions. This is obviously a very hard circuit
on brakes and we are straining ot
her components on the car as well. We have a lot of data to look up now to
try to put us in a good position tomorrow and we are feeling reasonably
confident going into Saturday.

Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director)

Itís good to have finally started, after all the winter testing and
preparation work. Also positive is that we didnít experience any problem on
the engine side in this first Free Practice of the new season. Both cars
have run many laps ñ Ralf completed 33
and Juan 36. The main target of today was finding a good base set-up for
this track and the weather helped as it allowed us to test every kind of
tyres.

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