BMW WilliamsF1 Team - Monaco GP - Practice

Monaco Grand Prix  -  FREE PRACTICE                  23rd May 2002

Weather:  cloudy, some drops of rain, 19ƒC Air, 20ƒC Track

Trouble free Thursday Free Practice session for the BMW WilliamsF1 Team
drivers Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya, who were 6th and 9th
respectively in Monte Carlo, for the 2002 Monaco Grand Prix.

Ralf Schumacher:               6th
Chassis: FW24 06
Best time: 1.19,937 min
"It is good that we have had a first day without any problems and this is
extremely important here. I have found the track surprisingly clean, which
made it a lot easier for us. I am quite happy with the balance of the car
and we have also already made our tyre choice. But even though, my lap time
is just not good enough yet. We have to see how we can improve."

Juan Pablo Montoya:         9th
Chassis: FW24 05 (T-Car FW24 02)
Best time: 1.20,264 min
"I am pretty happy, today went quite well and we did a lot of work with the
set-up. I am still struggling a bit with the balance of the car but it is
getting better and better. I feel a lot more comfortable than last year and
the car is a lot more competitive. I think there is still more to come and
we will make further improvements by Saturday. We usually do."

Sam Michael (Chief Operations Engineer, WilliamsF1):
"It was a normal first practice day, doing race set up and then looking
towards a set up for Saturday. Looking at where we have finished we still
have quite a bit of work between now and then. We collected useful data on
the tyres and now we will have a look and see what we can do. It's also
good that both the drivers have got through today's sessions without any
crashes."

Gerhard Berger (BMW Motorsport Director):
"On Thursday in Monte Carlo it is very important for a driver to find a
good rhythm and not to crash in the barriers as this hampers the whole
working programme. Track conditions change so much here from Thursday to
Saturday even if the weather doesn't change. You cannot really start
working on the fine tuning for qualifying earlier than Saturday morning. We
have completed our programme for the race and all in all we had a
troublefree day."