By BMW Sauber F1
April 19 2009

The wet Shanghai race left the BMW Sauber F1 Team empty handed. Both drivers were involved in a couple of the numerous incidents due to aquaplaning and poor visibility. In the end Nick Heidfeld finished 12th just ahead of his team mate, Robert Kubica. Nick Heidfeld: "Of course I'm disappointed with the outcome of today's race, but at the same time I feel I should be grateful I was able to finish it at all. The conditions in terms of visibility and aquaplaning were disastrous. In the beginning, after the safety car pulled off, my tyre pressures were too low so I struggled a lot. On lap 13 Timo Glock hit me, which caused damage to the car and certainly didn't help. However, close to the end of the race I had the chance to score one or two points, but then there was a lot of debris on the track, including a wheel, from Adrian Sutil's accident. I tried to find a way around it, but it was unpredictable which way it would go and it hit me. Afterwards the car felt very strange and I lost four places."

Robert Kubica: "Driving was very dangerous today. We had aquaplaning nearly everywhere and the lack of visibility was a disaster. There were quite a lot of situations when I couldn't see anything. All this also caused my heavy accident with Jarno Trulli. When Jarno braked into the corner I hit some standing water. Although I hit the brakes very hard the car still accelerated. I went quite high into the air after hitting his rear tyre, but fortunately nobody was hurt. After coming to the pits we had to change the front wing a second time as I felt some vibration and massively lost grip. This ruined my race."

Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director): "There is not much to say about this Grand Prix. From bad starting positions both our drivers were involved in collisions under these rainy conditions. The result is zero points. All we can do is put this race behind us and concentrate on Bahrain."

Willy Rampf (Head of Engineering): "That was a very disappointing race. Our only chance to get into the points was in a wet race, but we didn't score at all. We have to improve as quickly as possible."