The BMW WilliamsF1 Team collected four valuable points in today’s Premiere of the Chinese Grand Prix with Juan Pablo Montoya achieving fifth place. Ralf Schumacher's racing return ended on lap 37 when David Coulthard ran into the Williams, damaging the car's suspension.
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Ralf Schumacher
"It’s a true pity that my race had an early end. My car had a puncture following contact with Coulthard. He tried to overtake me but I think his move was a bit too optimistic. Anyway, I came into the pits to fix the car which we thought had been damaged but after a careful look, the engineers decided that I could continue the race. However, too much time had elapsed by then and it was too late to get out on track again, because I would have been two laps down. It’s a shame, because my race had been good until then and I had been fighting in the top five positions. It’s true I had lost a place at the start, but all in all I was in a position to collect some useful points."
Sam Michael, Technical Director
"On lap 37, Ralf had an incident with Coulthard which resulted in a puncture and caused him to pit. Unfortunately we were expecting Juan Pablo for his pit-stop. What happened between Ralf and Coulthard was a racing incident and unfortunately it resulted in Ralf’s car not scoring points. In terms of reliability, we had no problems."
Mario Theissen, BMW Motorsport Director
"After the collision with David Coulthard, Ralf came into the pit right before Juan’s second stop. Since we didn’t know that his car had been damaged, we refuelled and changed tyres to Juan’s car first, as scheduled, but when it became clear that Ralf had only a puncture, it was too late to send him out again."