NOVEMBER 2, 1998

BMW and Verstappen

THE Williams team recently delivered two FW20 chassis to Munich to be used by BMW for engine testing next season. The BMW engines are somewhat delayed but the latest version of the V10 is producing promising horsepower figures on the dynos. The first of these engines will be ready to run in the car in February when we expect that Jos Verstappen will be named the team's test driver, having had experience with both Renault and Ford F1 engines in recent years.

THE Williams team recently delivered two FW20 chassis to Munich to be used by BMW for engine testing next season. The BMW engines are somewhat delayed but the latest version of the V10 is producing promising horsepower figures on the dynos. The first of these engines will be ready to run in the car in February when we expect that Jos Verstappen will be named the team's test driver, having had experience with both Renault and Ford F1 engines in recent years.

We understand that the test team - which will be based in Munich - is already established and waiting to go into action. It remains to be seen who will run the operation but there are some technical changes going on at Williams at the moment. A recent visitor to the factory was McLaren engineer David Brown but it seems that he has decided to stay with the Woking team. There has also been talk of the team hiring a Ferrari engineer to take over the running of the race engineering. The team may however stay with Senior Operations Engineer James Robinson as he does not appear to have very many other options at the moment.