Bahrain: Race Notes - BMW

12/03/2006

This was not a great start for our team in Bahrain. After starting from 10th and 11th places respectively, neither Nick Heidfeld nor Jacques Villeneuve was able to score points in this opening round of the 2006 FIA Formula One World Championship. After an incident after the start, Nick dropped to 19th and had to fight back to 12th. Jacques retired on lap 30 with engine failure.

Nick Heidfeld: Obviously things started badly as Nico Rosberg spun me in the first corner. I lost a lot of places and that ruined my race. I was able to fight back and had a particularly exciting battle with Coulthard. It's difficult to assess our performance after only one race but naturally it's disappointing when you start 10th and can't score any points.

Jacques Villeneuve: My start was not particularly great, but I managed to find my way through the first few corners and to stay out of trouble there. The race set-up was fine and I settled into a good rhythm. I overtook Coulthard and stayed in front of Raikkonen for quite a while. Then all of a sudden I started to lose power, and that was it.

Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director): The start of the weekend was promising, but unfortunately we could not maintain our performance for the race. Jacques' car suffered a serious engine failure, without any warning. The unit was removed immediately after we got the car back, and sent to Munich for analysis. Nick was the victim of a collision in the first corner with Nico Rosberg, and was relegated to the tail of the field. From there he recovered to 12th but the lap times were not as good as expected. That shows that we have started well but still have much to do.

Willy Rampf (Technical Director Chassis): After qualifying we were optimistic for the race, but I have to admit that our pace this afternoon was not at the level we had expected after practice on Friday and Saturday. We have to analyse the reasons for this carefully, but for sure there is a lot of work to do.