Technical problem for Pizzonia

BMW and WilliamsF1 started their last Grand Prix weekend together as a team today when the free practice sessions begun. Mark Webber and Antonio Pizzonia were eighth and 11th in the morning and eighth and 16th in the afternoon in the last Friday Free Practice sessions of the 2005 season, the longest ever in the history of F1, with 19 Grand Prix.

Pizzonia's day was compromised by a suspension failure that saw him sit out much of the second session.

Mark Webber "We got through all of our programme today, We have been communicating well with Michelin to work out what we are going to do with the tyres and we have collected a lot of information to get through tonight in order to make sure that we make the right decision. We did a lot of laps today, because we have a new engine here which has to last only for this weekend, therefore we had a bit more mileage available. So far so good for the weekend, we have to do the same job tomorrow."

Antonio Pizzonia "We had a problem with the rear suspension in the second session, which is obviously disappointing because I lost a lot of important track time, especially because I am learning the circuit. We have to look into it and see what caused it. Apart from that, it's been a good day, learning the layout of the track. I am sure there's a lot more to come from me."

Sam Michael, Williams Technical Director "We have had a good practice day in terms of mileage as our engines will be used for just one race. We evaluated brakes, the tyre compounds and cooling for the race all of which was ok and our long run pace looked encouraging. Unfortunately on Antonio’s car we had a rear suspension failure which caused him to miss quite a lot of the second session. We have a solution for this problem for the race."

Mario Theissen, BMW Motorsport Director "We have witnessed two very busy practice sessions on this impressive circuit. For the very last time of the V10 era of Formula One both of our cars have got fresh BMW P84/5 engines. This weekend marks the end of a very successful phase of engine development. Over the past two years we have tripled the mileage for the engine in accordance with the regulations. Despite this, we have managed to further improve the output of the engine which two years ago was already 900 bhp and 19,000 rpm.