Berger: Williams must wait
Title hopefuls Williams have been warned they may have to wait until the second half of the season before they can expect to challenge Ferrari’s ominous early dominance.
Gerhard Berger, former motorsport boss of Williams’ engine partners BMW, believes the FW26 still needs more development before it can start matching Michael Schumacher’s car.
The six-time world champion swept to victory in the season opener in Australia, spearheading a Ferrari one-two with Rubens Barrichello while the Williams duo of Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya finished a distant fourth and fifth respectively.
“I don’t think in the first half of the year it is going to be possible to close the gap to Ferrari because the gap was really big,” said ex-grand prix racer Berger who quit his role at BMW last season.
“They just need to do development work and development work usually takes a bit of time.
“So I don’t see a big change in the next races except the influence of heat and tyres. And then we will see. Maybe from mid-season on we are going to see a strong competition.”
Williams are hoping to hit back in this weekend’s Malaysian Grand Prix, where they enjoyed a one-two last year, with the heat and humidity likely to favour their Michelin tyres over Ferrari’s Bridgestone rubber.
But Ferrari are confident of again being on the pace at Sepang. If so, it will be an ominous sign that this year they could repeat the domination they enjoyed in 2002 when they won 15 of the 17 races.
