Formula 1 news
A good result for Williams
25 March 2000Jenson Button and Ralf Schumacher will start from 9th and 11th positions respectively for the 2000 Brazilian Grand Prix. Button's performance is impressive considering the lack of mileage he achieved during the second free practice session as his car suffered an engine failure that again allowed him to complete only a few laps.
Jenson Button was pleased to qualify so well. "It's really good to have qualified in the top 10 but I must say that I was happier when most drivers had done about six or seven laps and I was in sixth position."
"Being ninth is good but again, who wouldn't have liked to be further up the grid?" continued Button. "The team did a good job, the mechanics especially for changing the engine so quickly between free practice and qualifying -I really must say thanks to them. At the end of qualifying when it was raining I went out, more to try the car in wet conditions than to achieve a better time, obviously."
Ralf Schumacher admitted his mistake, "Unfortunately I went in the wrong direction with the set-up of the car, as the rear of my car was a little bit too stiff. Even though we changed this during qualifying, eventually I could not manage to achieve anything better than 11th."
"Anyway, I am quite confident for the race," explained Schumacher, "First because in the free practice the FW22 behaved really well in race conditions, secondly because it might rain tomorrow and this could be positive for us."
Frank Williams explained what happened from a team view point. "One half of our team benefited from the early curtailment of practice due to the weather. Certainly Ralf suffered because of that rain. I think we are quite competitive but then I've also noted there are almost fourteen cars contained within one second and they too could rightly say they are quite competitive."
Gerhard Berger, BMW Motorsport Director was once again pleased with the result of the team.
"This is a good qualifying result for us. After what we achieved in Melbourne this is the second positive outcome as newcomers. The times between the fifth and 15th position are very close - a tenth of one second can make the difference of even two grid rows in our surrounding."
"Being interrupted so many times upset Ralf's rhythm and the rain took away from Jenson his last chance to make his already outstanding time even better. But everybody had to cope today with the interruptions and the wet."
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Test Schedule
| 01 Feb. | 
Valencia |
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| 02 Feb. |
Valencia |
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| 03 Feb. |
Valencia |
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| 04 Feb. | 
Silverstone |
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| 05 Feb. |
Silverstone |
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| 10 Feb. |
Jerez |
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| 11 Feb. |
Jerez |
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| 12 Feb. |
Jerez |
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| 13 Feb. |
Jerez |
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| Full Formula 1 test schedule | ||
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