Williams disappoint yet again.
13th May, 2001

It was a disappointing day for the BMW WilliamsF1 team in Austria, when for the third time this season neither one of the white and blue cars finished a race.
In the morning warm-up Ralf Schumacher complained about understeer, however in the afternoon it was a different problem that brought his race to a premature end. Starting from 3rd he overtook his brother, Michael, at the start to run in second place.

However, on lap 10 a problem with the pressure of the brakes forced him to crawl back to the pits and retire. "I had a great start to the race, which proved our launch control worked really well," he said. " I then had a brake pressure problem so my pedal got longer and longer, and at the end I had nearly no pressure left. I had to retire, that is all. Of course I am disappointed."

For the fifth time in six races his team mate, Juan Pablo Montoya, failed to see the chequered flag. After a brilliant start from the dirty side of the track saw him take the lead, the 25-year old Colombian refused to give in when Michael Schumacher tried to overtake him on lap 16. As a result of their minor coming together he dropped back to 7th after an off into the gravel trap.

He was then forced to retire on lap 10 because of a hydraulic problem. "I made a good start and during the race the car was behaving better and better," he commented. "What happened with Michael was just a racing incident, he braked quite late, I braked late as well, I locked the rear tyres and ran wide. At the end we lost hydraulic pressure, I got an alarm two corners before and I knew that was going to be it."

Technical Director, Patrick Head, spoke afterwards about his concerns over the reliability of the FW23s. "We had a problem with the rear brakes on Ralf's car, I am not quite certain what, but they got very hot," he began. "On Juan Pablo's car we had a hydraulic leak, but we don't really know on what part of the system of the car. Basically not very impressive on the reliability side."